Huge Deposits of Diamonds Exist on Mercury

According to a recent study by scientists, a thick layer of diamonds may be there on Mercury, the planet closest to the sun.

But this huge deposit of diamonds exists hundreds of miles underneath the surface of Mercury, according to a report in Live Science.

The results of the study were published in the journal Nature Communications.

For many years, scientists believed that the temperature and pressure in the mantle of mercury were suitable for carbon to form graphite, which floats to the surface because it is lighter. A 2019 study revealed that the mantle of Mercury might be 50 kilometers deeper than previously thought. This would significantly increase the temperature and pressure at the mantle-core boundary leading to crystallization of carbon to turn into diamond.

A team of Belgian and Chinese researchers prepared chemical soups using carbon, silica, and iron resembling the magma ocean of the infant Mercury. In addition, the researchers added different concentrations of iron sulfide to these soups as per the sulfur-rich surface of Mercury today. They also recreated the physical conditions under which graphite or diamond would be stable using computer models to obtain more accurate measurements of the temperature and pressure near Mercury’s core-mantle border.

The team’s computer models suggested that diamonds might have formed during the solidification of Mercury’s inner core under these altered circumstances. Then, it floated up to the core-mantle barrier because it was less dense than the core. According to the estimates, if diamonds are present, they form a layer that is typically roughly 15 km thick.

But it is not feasible to mine these diamonds as mercury has extremely high temperature at the surface and the diamonds are located almost 485 km below the surface. So their extraction is almost impossible.