Largest Extraterrestrial Diamonds Found Inside Meteorites

Eddie Gonzales Jr. – MessageToEagle.com – Geoscientists from Goethe University have found the largest extraterrestrial diamonds ever discovered inside meteorites.

Working with an international team of researchers, they have proved that these diamonds formed in the early period of our solar system when minor planets collided together or with large asteroids.

Artist’s impression of the collision of two protoplanets.Credits: NASA/SOFIA/Lynette Cook 

Their research disproves the theory that they originated deep inside planets – similar to diamonds formed on Earth.

It is estimated that over 10 million asteroids are circling the Earth in the asteroid belt, and among them, there are Ureilites are a special type of meteorites. These are fragments of a larger celestial body – probably a minor planet – which was smashed to pieces through violent collisions with other minor planets or large asteroids.

The diamonds on the scale of over 0.1 and more millimeters now discovered cannot have formed when the meteoroids hit the Earth. Impact events with such vast energies would make the meteoroids evaporate completely.

That is why it was so far assumed that these larger diamonds – similar to those in the Earth’s interior – must have been formed by continuous pressure in the interior of planetary precursors the size of Mars or Mercury.

With colleagues from Italy, the USA, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Switzerland, and Sudan, researchers from Goethe University have now found the largest diamonds ever discovered in ureilites from Morocco and Sudan and analyzed them in detail.

Apart from the diamonds of up to several 100 micrometers in size, numerous nests of diamonds on just nanometre scale as well as nanographite were found in the ureilites. Closer analyses showed that londsdalite layers exist in the nanodiamonds, a modification of diamonds that only occurs through sudden, very high pressure.

“Our extensive new studies show that these unusual extraterrestrial diamonds formed through the immense shock pressure that occurred when a large asteroid or even minor planet smashed into the surface of the ureilite parent body,” Professor Frank Brenker from the Department of Geosciences at Goethe University said in a press release.

“It’s, by all means, possible that it was precisely this enormous impact that ultimately led to the complete destruction of the minor planet.

This means – contrary to prior assumptions – that the larger ureilite diamonds are not a sign that protoplanets the size of Mars or Mercury existed in the early period of our solar system, but nonetheless of the immense, destructive forces that prevailed at that time.”

Paper

Written by Eddie Gonzales Jr. – MessageToEagle.com Staff