Research : Diamond Has Come From A Lost Planet

Research : Diamond Has Come From A Lost Planet

Researchers from switzerland, France and germany examined diamonds found within the Almahata sitta meteoroid and finished they were possibly formed by a proto-planet a minimum of 4.55 billion years ago. The diamonds within the meteoroid, which crashed in Sudan's Nubian Desert in october 2008, have little crystals within them that might have needed great pressure to form, said one amongst the study's co-authors, Philippe Gillet.

"We demonstrate that these massive diamonds can't be the results of a shock however rather of growth that has taken place within a planet," he told The Associated Press in a very interview from switzerland.

Gillet, a planetary scientist at the Federal Institute of Technology in lausanne, aforesaid researchers calculated a pressure of 200,000 bar (2.9 million psi) would be required to create such diamonds, suggesting the mystery planet was as least as huge as Mercury, probably even Mars.

Scientists have long theorized that the first solar system once contained more planets—some of that were probably very little over a mass of liquified magma. one amongst these embryo planets—dubbed Theia—is believed to own slammed into a young Earth, ejecting an outsized quantity of debris that later shaped the moon.

"What we're claiming here," said Gillet, "is that we've in our hands a remnant of this 1st generation of planets that are missing these days as a result of they were destroyed or incorporated in an exceedingly larger planet."

Addi Bischoff, a meteoroid expert at the University of muenster, Germany, said the ways used for the study were sound and also the conclusion was plausible. however additional proof of sustained high pressure would be expected to be found within the minerals encompassing the diamonds, he said.