9 miles of solid diamonds may lurk beneath Mercury's surface, new study finds [View all]

By Deepa Jain
published 9 hours ago

New simulations suggest that a 9-mile-thick layer of diamonds may lurk deep below the surface of Mercury. The gems almost certainly can't be mined for bling — but they may help solve some of the planet's biggest mysteries.



A rendered photo of Mercury with rainbow colors across its surface
Mercury, seen in this false-color image, may have a deep layer of inner diamonds, new research finds. (Image credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington)


Mercury may have a thick layer of diamonds hundreds of miles below its surface, a new study shows. The findings, published June 14 in the journal Nature Communications, may help solve mysteries about the planet's composition and peculiar magnetic field.

Mercury is filled with mysteries. For one, it has a magnetic field. Although it's much weaker than Earth's, the magnetism is unexpected because the planet is tiny and appears to be geologically inactive. Mercury also has unusually dark surface patches that NASA's Messenger mission identified as graphite, a form of carbon.

That latter feature is what sparked the curiosity of Yanhao Lin, a staff scientist at the Center for High Pressure Science and Technology Advanced Research in Beijing and co-author of the study. Mercury's extremely high carbon content "made me realize that something special probably happened within its interior," he said in a statement.

Despite Mercury’s oddities, scientists suspect it probably formed the way other terrestrial planets did: from the cooling of a hot magma ocean. In Mercury's case, this ocean was likely rich in carbon and silicate. First, metals coagulated within it, forming a central core, while the remaining magma crystallized into the planet's middle mantle and outer crust.

More:
https://www.livescience.com/space/mercury/9-miles-of-solid-diamonds-may-lurk-beneath-mercurys-surface-new-study-finds