Earth’s rarest material is ‘not’ diamond: Scientists reveal new evidence that changes how we consider ‘rare’ |
A spacecraft drifting past Neptune would not need much imagination to picture diamonds forming in its atmosphere. Deep inside ice giants, carbon compounds are squeezed under pressures that break molecular bonds and reorganise atoms into crystalline structures. In lab experiments and planetary simulations, scientists have modelled this “diamond rain” for decades, and missions like NASA’s…