Diamonds From Long-Destroyed Planet Offer Clue to Origins of Solar System

Scientists have found traces of an ancient protoplanet inside extraterrestrial diamonds that fell to Earth about 10 years ago.

The diamonds were discovered inside a small asteroid that slammed into the Nubian Desert in northeastern Sudan in 2008.

In a study published in Tuesday’s issue of the journal Nature Communications, a team of scientists say that the tiny contents found inside the diamonds indicate that they could only have formed deep inside a Mercury- or Mars-sized protoplanet that originated in the early days of the solar system.

Diamonds can form in a few ways, including in the high-temperature and high-pressure environments similar to those found deep inside earth. They  can also be formed by a shock wave impact resulting in a short-lived high-pressure and high-temperature environment.

According to Caltech University geochemist Paul Azimow, shock waves produce very tiny diamonds, whereas the ones found in Sudan are too big, meaning that they formed toward the center of an object large enough to produce the required amount of pressure and heat.

Studying the chemical contents inside the diamonds, the scientists concluded that they were captured by the diamonds during an extremely high-pressure phase that could be found only in a planetary body between the size of Mercury and Mars.

“A commonplace theory for the origins of planets is that there were a lot of small objects that ran into each other to make larger objects," Azimow said.

Many planetary and lunar scientists believe that it was a collision between Earth and a Mars-sized planet that led to the formation of our moon.

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