It might rain diamonds on more than 1900 exoplanets across the galaxy

The skies of icy planets across the cosmos could also be stuffed with diamonds. Compressed carbon compounds can flip into diamonds at much less excessive temperatures than researchers thought had been required, which can make diamond rain a typical phenomenon inside ice giants.

In the previous, laboratory experiments have led to confusion about the situations beneath which diamonds may kind inside ice giants equivalent to Uranus and Neptune. There are two varieties of experiments investigating this: dynamic compression experiments, wherein carbon compounds are subjected to a sudden shock, and static compression experiments, wherein they’re positioned inside a chamber and compressed steadily. So far, dynamic compression experiments have required a lot increased temperatures and pressures to kind diamonds.

Mungo Frost at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in California and his colleagues carried out a brand new set of experiments utilizing static compression however dynamic heating, compressing polystyrene – the identical polymer used to make Styrofoam – by squeezing it between two diamonds after which hitting it with pulses of X-ray mild. They noticed diamonds starting to kind from the polystyrene at temperatures of about 2200°C and pressures round 19 gigapascals, situations much like these in the shallow interiors of Uranus and Neptune.

These pressures are a lot decrease than the pressures discovered to be needed for diamond formation in earlier experiments utilizing dynamic compression. The response took longer than dynamic compression experiments sometimes run, which might clarify why such experiments haven’t picked up low-pressure diamond formation. “It disagreed with established results and wasn’t what we expected to see, but it fit in nicely and sort of tied everything together,” says Frost. “It turns out that was all down to different timescales.”

This may imply that diamond rain is feasible on smaller planets than we beforehand thought. Of the 5600 or so confirmed exoplanets, the researchers calculated that more than 1900 may have diamond rain.

It additionally signifies that inside the photo voltaic system, diamonds may kind at shallower depths than we thought, which may change our understanding of the dynamics of the interiors of large planets. This shallower formation may enable the diamond rain to move by a layer of ice because it sinks in direction of the centres of those planets. This would, in flip, have an effect on the icy worlds’ magnetic fields, that are complicated and poorly understood.