Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Uranus and Neptune May Have "Oceans of Diamonds"

Posted by kdawson on Monday January 25, @09:33PM
from the went-to-sea-in-a-sieve dept.
Third Position writes"Oceans of liquid diamond topped with solid 'icebergs' of the precious gems could be on Uranus and Neptune. The first-ever detailed research into the melting point of diamond found it behaves like water during melting and freezing — with its solid form floating on the liquid. A large diamond ocean on one or both of the planets could provide an explanation for an oddity they both share: unlike Earth, they do not have magnetic poles that match up with their geographical poles."The article doesn't mention what the pressures might be like in these outer-planets environments, but the researchers found that liquefying diamond requires 40 million times Earth's atmospheric pressure at sea level.

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