Diamond rain' falls on Saturn and Jupiter
05:01:00
Diamonds big enough to be
worn by Hollywood film stars could be raining down on Saturn and
Jupiter, US scientists have calculated.
New atmospheric data for the gas giants indicates that carbon is abundant in its dazzling crystal form, they say.Lightning storms turn methane into soot (carbon) which as it falls hardens into chunks of graphite and then diamond.
These diamond "hail stones" eventually melt into a liquid sea in the planets' hot cores, Dr Kevin Baines University of Wisconsin-Madison
The biggest diamonds would
likely be about a centimetre in diameter - "big enough to put on a ring,
although of course they would be uncut," says Dr Kevin Baines, of the
University of Wisconsin-Madison and Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
He added they would be of a size that the late film 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."
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