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Oddballs: The strange worlds beyond our Solar System
Find boosts 'diamond planet' idea
Diamond star thrills astronomers
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, they told a
conference.
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People ask me - how can you really tell? It all boils down to the chemistry. And we think
we're pretty certain
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-
Gigantic storms on Saturn create black clouds of soot which hardens into diamonds as it falls
Uranus and Neptune have long been thought to harbour gemstones. But Saturn and Jupiter were not
thought to have suitable atmospheres.
Baines and Delitsky analysed the latest temperature and pressure predictions for the planets' interiors,
as well as new data on how carbon behaves in different conditions.
They concluded that stable crystals of diamond will "hail down over a huge region" of Saturn in
particular.
"It all begins in the upper atmosphere, in the thunderstorm alleys, where lightning turns methane into
soot," said Baines.
"As the soot falls, the pressure on it increases. And after about 1,000 miles it turns to graphite - the
it unlikely any space probe sent to sample the planet's innards would dig up anything sparkling.
Carbon, the element diamonds are made of, now appears to be less abundant in relation to oxygen in
the planet's host star - and by extension, perhaps the planet.
"Based on what we know at this point, 55 Cancri e is more of a 'diamond in the rough'," said author
Johanna Teske, of the University of Arizona.