Space Planets Full of Diamonds? Researchers Say Yes

Maybe the next time Newt Gingrich goes on one of his Blingrich diamond-shopping sprees, he can do so aboard a space shuttle.

Researchers at the Ohio State University released a new report last week that argued the Milky Way galaxy contains planets made up almost entirely of diamonds, the shiny clear crystal that's been getting men laid for millennia. The research comes from Wendy Panero, associate professor in the School of Earth Sciences at Ohio State, and doctoral student Cayman Unterborn, who teamed up to test the conditions under which diamonds form in the mantles of planets such as Earth. “It's possible for planets that are as big as fifteen times the mass of the Earth to be half made of diamond,” Unterborn said in a presentation of the study Tuesday at the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco. “Our results are striking, in that they suggest carbon-rich planets can form with a core and a mantle, just as Earth did,” Panero added. “However, the cores would likely be very carbon-rich – much like steel – and the mantle would also be dominated by carbon, much in the form of diamond.” The research began with a look into what Earth's core conditions are like, and whether or not the composition of heat and pressure there would create diamonds. Panero and a former graduate student carried out an experiment that found, under conditions present in the inner Earth, much of the iron core oxidizes but leaves behind pockets of pure carbon — which later turns into diamonds. It is expected that there is an entire layer of diamonds surrounding the core of the Earth. This part wasn't exactly news. Geologists have long suspected such findings. What they didn't expect was the idea that an entire planet, including one much, much larger than Earth, could exist that is made primarily of diamonds. Yet that is exactly what this research found. The researchers modeled what would happen when these results were applied to the composition of a carbon super-Earth. What they found is that the new planet could become very large, with a center of iron and carbon that merged to form a kind of carbon steel in the core, and vast quantities of pure carbon in the mantle in the form of diamonds. What does that mean for diamond-seekers? Probably not much. The inner core of the Earth has a temperature similar to the edges of the sun, meaning the areas where the diamonds would exist on Earth would be far too hot to investigate directly, let along habitable enough to harvest diamonds. But the larger planets? They wouldn't have the same issues with heat. “We think a diamond planet must be a very cold, dark place,” Panero said. Because diamonds so readily transfer heat, a planet comprised of so many diamonds would be unable to hold in enough heat to have a functioning atmosphere. The interior of such a planet would freeze quickly. With the right material and space transportation, it's theoretically possible to get a space crew, armed with mining robots, to such a planet for mining missions. It's a question of when such an endeavor would be profitable. For now, it doesn't look feasible. But 50 years from now? 100? Who knows, right? At least the science is there to show it's theoretically possible.