With diamonds draped from your ears, wrists, neck and even navel, it’s safe to say you’re a diamond lover. In fact from a very young age, you’ve dreamt about being the owner and hoarder of diamonds in many different shapes, sizes and forms. Diamonds are a girl’s best friend with reason – they are beautiful, lavish and denote style, affluence and taste.
If you consider yourself a devoted collector of diamonds, the following story of ‘diamond rain’ falling on Saturn and Jupiter, will certainly whet your insatiable thirst for diamonds further – could it be that you could reach these diamond-drenched planets one day?
Scientists from the United States have worked out that diamonds the size of the ones Kim Kardashian and Paris Hilton love to flaunt could soon be raining down on Saturn and Jupiter. You may want to rub your eyes and read that sentence again but to save you from the bother, we’ll reiterate it again – Hollywood-sized diamonds could rain down on planets in our solar system.
Dazzling Crystal Carbon
New atmospheric data indicates that carbon is abundant in its dazzling crystal form. The scientists say that lightning storms will turn methane into carbon. When the carbon falls it hardens into larger chunks of graphite which eventually turns into diamonds. The findings were uncovered at the meeting of the Division for Planetary Sciences in Colorado. Talking at a conference, the American scientists said that these diamond “hail stones” eventually melts into a sea of liquid in our planet’s hot cores.
Doctor Kevin Baines, of Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said the biggest diamond “hail stones” would be likely to be approximately a centimetre in diameter. “Big enough to put on a ring, although of course they would be uncut,” said Dr. Baines. Just to deepen of pangs of diamond desire even further, the scientist added the diamonds would be the size of the ones the later Hollywood actress Elizabeth Taylor would have been “proud to wear.”
“The bottom line is that 1,000 tonnes of diamonds a year are being created on Saturn. People ask me – how can you really tell? Because there’s no way you can go and observe it. It all boils down to the chemistry. And we think we’re pretty certain,” added Dr. Baines.
Uranus & Neptune Harbourers of Gemstones?
It has long been thought that Uranus and Neptune have harboured gemstones. Up until now it was widely believed Saturn and Jupiter did not have the right atmospheres to nurture crystals. By analysing the temperature and pressure predictions for the planets’ interiors, the scientists concluded that diamond crystals will “hail down over a huge region” ODF Saturn in particular. We say, the sooner they find a means to travel to Saturn and Jupiter, the better.