Researchers have long suggested that extremely high pressure and temperatures like those in space ice giants like Neptune or Uranus can turn carbon and hydrogen into solid diamond-like objects. So, after using plastic to recreate the precipitation that could be forming deep inside such ice planets, researchers added oxygen and found that diamond rain could be a phenomenon that might be occurring across the universe.
Diamond Rain in Space Probably Happens Only on Certain Ice Planets
Recent research has shown that ice planets are highly abundant throughout space, and their interiors are often composed of methane, ammonia, water, and other elements. So, when these materials face the extreme temperatures that arise inside these planets, they undergo chemical reactions and transitions that result in diamonds raining from the sky.
According to physicist Dominik Kraus, who is one of the study’s authors, the diamonds would form and slowly sink to the core of the planets. He also stated that these diamonds can be enough to form layers upon layers that span hundreds of miles or more.
Scientists Simulated the Conditions on Ice Planets Common in Space
The team of researchers faced a difficult challenge to conduct their experiment – simulating the conditions that would occur on ice planets. To achieve that, they mixed oxygen, carbon, and hydrogen on PET plastic. The team then turned on a high-power optical laser on the plastic combined with short X-ray flashes with very high brightness. This allowed them to watch the forming nanodiamonds. These tiny diamonds were too small to view with the naked eye. According to Kraus, the oxygen present in large amounts on those planets in space is what helps hydrogen atoms get away from the carbon to form the nanodiamonds.
So far, the research is purely hypothetical because humans know little about Neptune and Uranus, given that they’re the most distant planets from Earth. Only one spacecraft has flown near them to take pictures and data from the two space ice giants, and that is NASA’s Voyager 2. The Voyager missions happened way back in the 1980s.