how are diamonds in space made?

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I’m not really sure how diamonds are made on earth, either. I know it’s something to do with the pressure of the earth compressing them over a long long period of time, but by that rough logic, how could they be formed in space? For example i read that It LITERALLY rains diamonds on Saturn and Jupiter, and there’s been evidence of small meteors crashing into earth and leaving discards of diamonds everywhere, from space.

In: Geology

4 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

All you need to make a diamond is heat, carbon, and pressure. Diamonds are only valuable to humans because we think they are, when in reality they’re just like every other thing in the universe.

Anonymous 0 Comments

they’re not formed in space. they’re formed in high pressure conditions. Jupiter and Saturn are MASSIVE and meet those conditions you can fit 10 Earth’s in a line inside Jupiter.

Anonymous 0 Comments

To make a diamond you need carbon, heat, and pressure.

There’s enough pressure deep inside the earth to do this over time, but the intense conditions inside gas giants and collapsing stars can forge diamonds much faster.

There’s 200,000 atmospheres of pressure at 200C in Earth’s upper mantle. It’s 10,000C and over a million atmospheres when you get down towards where Jupiter starts looking like a solid.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Diamonds are carbon crystals, with a face centered cubic Bravais lattice and two atoms in the basis. You don’t need to understand that last bit as long as you realize that this sort of structure forms in other things, like α-tin. To get carbon to form this shape, it has to be at a pretty high pressure, but the atmospheres of Saturn and Jupiter have plenty of carbon and ginormous pressure.

Get some carbon atoms under enough pressure, they form this shape. Like other crystals, additional atoms can grow around the existing seed, making it get bugger.