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Science
Related: About this forumMercury has a layer of diamond 10 miles thick, NASA spacecraft finds
💎💎💎💎💎💎💎💎💎💎💎
https://www.space.com/mercury-diamond-layer-10-miles-thick-nasa-messenger
The solar system's tiniest planet may be hiding a big secret. Using data from NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft, scientists have determined that a 10-mile-thick diamond mantle may lie beneath the crust of Mercury, the closest planet to the sun.
Mercury's puzzles ...
Also among these puzzles are patches of graphite, a type (or "allotrope" ) of carbon on the surface of the innermost planet of the solar system. These patches have led scientists to suggest that in Mercury's early history, the tiny planet had a carbon-rich magma ocean. This ocean would have floated to the surface, creating graphite patches and the dark-shaded hue of Mercury's surface.
The same process would have also led to the formation of a carbon-rich mantle beneath the surface. The team behind these findings thinks that this mantle isn't graphene, as previously suspected, but is composed of another much more precious allotrope of carbon: diamond.
"We calculate that, given the new estimate of the pressure at the mantle-core boundary, and knowing that Mercury is a carbon-rich planet, the carbon-bearing mineral that would form at the interface between mantle and core is diamond and not graphite," team member Olivier Namur, an associate professor at KU Leuven, told Space.com. "Our study uses geophysical data collected by the NASA MESSENGER spacecraft."
Lots more. Link to the paper (below) and there's a download link there to an open-access PDF
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-49305-x
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Mercury has a layer of diamond 10 miles thick, NASA spacecraft finds (Original Post)
usonian
Jul 26
OP
KPN
(15,947 posts)1. Let's send Musk and all the MAGAts to Mercury to mine them.
Maybe we can entice them eith whatever they can bring back they can keep.
eShirl
(18,683 posts)2. Mercury in the Sky with Diamonds
![](/emoticons/wow.gif)
Javaman
(62,848 posts)3. In other news: the diamond cartel has put in a big to buy Mercury. nt
lastlib
(24,275 posts)4. Some scientists have theorized that Jupiter has a gigantic diamond at its core.
We carbon creatures should be very afraid........