Oceans of liquid diamond, filled with solid diamond icebergs, could be floating on Neptune and Uranus, according to a recent article in the journal Nature Physics. De Beers will be sending underpaid slaves workers there by the end of the century to harvest.
The research, based on first detailed measurements of the melting point of diamond, found diamond behaves like water during freezing and melting, with solid forms floating atop liquid forms. That surprising revelation gave scientists a new understanding about diamonds and some of the most distant planets in our solar system. “Diamond is a relatively common material on Earth, but its melting point has never been measured,” said one scientist. “You can’t just raise the temperature and have it melt, you have to also go to high pressures, which makes it very difficult to measure the temperature.”
A group from Sandia National Laboratories successfully melted diamond years ago, but they were unable to measure the pressure and temperature at which the diamond melted. Next time, pay attention! Because a diamond is incredibly hard, it is difficult to melt, but another quality that makes the melting point more difficult to measure is that a diamond doesn’t like to stay a diamond when it gets hot. When heated to extreme temperatures it physically changes, from diamond to graphite. The graphite, and not the diamond, then melts into a liquid. The trick for the scientists was to heat the diamond up while simultaneously stopping it from transforming into graphite.
Ultrahigh pressures, the kind found in huge gas giants like Neptune and Uranus are some of the places where ultrahigh temperatures and ultrahigh pressures exist. By placing a small, natural, clear diamond, about a tenth of a carat by weight and half a millimeter thick, under lasers at extreme pressures, they were able to simulate those characteristics. The scientists liquefied the diamond at pressures 40 million times greater than what a person feels when standing at sea level on Earth. From there they slowly reduced the temperature and pressure. When the pressure dropped to about 11 million times the atmospheric pressure at sea level on Earth and the temperature dropped to about 50,000 degrees solid chunks of diamond began to appear. The pressure kept dropping, but the temperature of the diamond remained the same, with more and more chunks of diamond forming.
Then the diamond did something unexpected. The chunks of diamond didn’t sink. They floated. Microscopic diamond ice burgs floating in a tiny sea of liquid diamond. The diamond was behaving like water. With most materials, the solid state is more dense than the liquid state. Water is an exception to that rule; when water freezes, the resulting ice is actually less dense than the surrounding water, which is why the ice floats and fish can survive a midwestern winter.
An ocean of diamond could help explain the orientation of the planet’s magnetic field as well. The Earth’s magnetic poles roughly match up with the geographic poles. But the magnetic and geographic poles on Uranus and Neptune do not match up; in fact, they can be up to 60 degrees off of the north-south axis - and the swirling ocean of liquid diamond could be responsible. Up to 10% of Uranus and Neptune is estimated to be made from carbon. A huge ocean of liquid diamond in the right place could deflect or tilt the magnetic field out of alignment with the rotation of the planet.
But really, the draw here are cheap, conflict free, bloodless diamonds. From space. For my girlfriend.
The research, based on first detailed measurements of the melting point of diamond, found diamond behaves like water during freezing and melting, with solid forms floating atop liquid forms. That surprising revelation gave scientists a new understanding about diamonds and some of the most distant planets in our solar system. “Diamond is a relatively common material on Earth, but its melting point has never been measured,” said one scientist. “You can’t just raise the temperature and have it melt, you have to also go to high pressures, which makes it very difficult to measure the temperature.”A group from Sandia National Laboratories successfully melted diamond years ago, but they were unable to measure the pressure and temperature at which the diamond melted. Next time, pay attention! Because a diamond is incredibly hard, it is difficult to melt, but another quality that makes the melting point more difficult to measure is that a diamond doesn’t like to stay a diamond when it gets hot. When heated to extreme temperatures it physically changes, from diamond to graphite. The graphite, and not the diamond, then melts into a liquid. The trick for the scientists was to heat the diamond up while simultaneously stopping it from transforming into graphite.
Ultrahigh pressures, the kind found in huge gas giants like Neptune and Uranus are some of the places where ultrahigh temperatures and ultrahigh pressures exist. By placing a small, natural, clear diamond, about a tenth of a carat by weight and half a millimeter thick, under lasers at extreme pressures, they were able to simulate those characteristics. The scientists liquefied the diamond at pressures 40 million times greater than what a person feels when standing at sea level on Earth. From there they slowly reduced the temperature and pressure. When the pressure dropped to about 11 million times the atmospheric pressure at sea level on Earth and the temperature dropped to about 50,000 degrees solid chunks of diamond began to appear. The pressure kept dropping, but the temperature of the diamond remained the same, with more and more chunks of diamond forming.
Then the diamond did something unexpected. The chunks of diamond didn’t sink. They floated. Microscopic diamond ice burgs floating in a tiny sea of liquid diamond. The diamond was behaving like water. With most materials, the solid state is more dense than the liquid state. Water is an exception to that rule; when water freezes, the resulting ice is actually less dense than the surrounding water, which is why the ice floats and fish can survive a midwestern winter.
An ocean of diamond could help explain the orientation of the planet’s magnetic field as well. The Earth’s magnetic poles roughly match up with the geographic poles. But the magnetic and geographic poles on Uranus and Neptune do not match up; in fact, they can be up to 60 degrees off of the north-south axis - and the swirling ocean of liquid diamond could be responsible. Up to 10% of Uranus and Neptune is estimated to be made from carbon. A huge ocean of liquid diamond in the right place could deflect or tilt the magnetic field out of alignment with the rotation of the planet.
But really, the draw here are cheap, conflict free, bloodless diamonds. From space. For my girlfriend.
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