Several groups of researchers have suggested that the methane in these planets could conceivably turn into diamond at fairly shallow depths, about one tenth of the way to the center. Nearly two decades ago, a group at Lawrence Livermore National laboratory shocked some methane and reported the formation of diamond before the stuff evaporated. That group was led by retired scientist Marvin Ross and researchers William Nellis and Francis Ree.
Recently some theorists in Italy also concluded that diamonds were likely.
Benedetti and Jeanloz decided to try the obvious experiment -- squeeze liquid methane and see if they could make diamond dust.
The liquid methane, cooled with liquid nitrogen, was placed in a diamond anvil cell and squeezed to between 10 and 50 billion pascals (gigapascals), or about 100,000 - 500,000 times atmospheric pressure. The researchers then heated the compressed methane with an infrared laser to about 2,000 to 3,000 Kelvin (3600-5400 degrees Fahrenheit).
"It's really cool to watch," said Benedetti. "When you turn on the laser the methane turns black because of all the diamonds created. The black diamond specks float in a clear hydrocarbon liquid melted by the laser."
Raman spectroscopy confirmed the identity of the suspended specks, as did subsequent analysis with X-ray crystallography. The flecks were diamonds interspersed with hydrocarbons.
Jeanloz said that the high temperature breaks up methane (CH4) into carbon and hydrogen, while high pressure condenses the carbon to diamond. Other types of hydrocarbons -- doubly and triply bonded carbon -- also were produced, apparently in the cooler areas outside that illuminated by the laser.
Jeanloz and his team plan next to see what happens to other constituents of these planets -- ammonia and water -- at high temperatures and pressures.
Coauthors of the paper with Benedetti and Jeanloz are post-doctoral researcher Jeffrey H. Nguyen, now a scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory; geology graduate student Wendell A. Caldwell, Chinese visiting scholar Hongjian Liu and Michael Kruger, a former graduate student now in the physics department at the University of Missouri, Kansas City.
Diamonds From The Sky
Amherst - August 9, 1999 - In the Aug. 6 issue of the journal Science, University of Massachusetts geoscientist Stephen Haggerty contends that some of the carbon in diamonds comes from outer space.
Haggerty argues against the long-held view that the carbon in diamond comes from the remains of plants and marine organisms as they decayed under the high temperatures and pressures of the Earth's deep interior. The invited review is titled, "A Diamond Trilogy: Superplumes, Supercontinents, and Supernovae."
Many in the scientific community have long theorized that diamonds are primarily the result of organic materials that were dragged into the Earth's interior as one continental plate was thrust beneath another in a process called subduction.
