Latest Findings: Planet Mercury Is Full of Diamonds

JAKARTA – The closest planet to Earth, Mercury, is thought to consist of a layer of diamond 14.5 kilometers thick beneath its surface.

This most expensive gemstone is almost certainly un-mineable for jewelry, but it could help solve some of the planet’s greatest mysteries.

Live Science reported on Thursday (18/7/2024) that based on findings published in the journal Natural Communications on June 14, this has the potential to solve the mystery of the planet’s composition and magnetic field.

Mercury has long been known to be full of mysteries, one of which is the existence of a magnetic field. Although much weaker than Earth’s, this magnetic field is unexpected because the planet is small and does not appear to be geologically active. Mercury also has very dark surface patches that NASA’s Messenger mission identified as graphite, a form of carbon.

It was this carbon that piqued the curiosity of Yanhao Lin, a staff scientist at the Advanced Research Center for High-Pressure Science and Technology in Beijing. “Mercury’s extremely high carbon content made me realize that something special might be happening in its interior,” he said in a statement.

Despite Mercury’s oddities, scientists suspect its elements probably formed like other terrestrial planets, including from the cooling of a hot magma ocean.

In Mercury’s case, this ocean was likely rich in carbon and silicates. First, the metals clumped together in it, forming the central core, while the remaining magma crystallized into the planet’s middle mantle and outer crust.

For years, researchers thought the mantle’s temperature and pressure were high enough for carbon to form graphite, which is lighter than the mantle and floats to the surface. But a 2019 study suggested Mercury’s mantle may be 50 kilometers (31 miles) deeper than previously thought. This significantly increases the pressure and temperature at the boundary between the core and mantle, creating conditions for carbon to crystallize into diamonds.

To investigate this possibility, a team of Belgian and Chinese researchers, including Lin, mixed a liquid chemical compound that included iron, silica and carbon. This mixture has a composition similar to that of certain types of meteorites, thought to mimic Mercury’s magma ocean.