Dwarf planet collision could have led to strange ultra-hard diamonds to Earth
September 13, 2022 By Awanish Kumar
(Image Credit Google)
It is possible that strange hexagonal diamonds were created when a small planet collided around 4.5 billion years ago with an asteroid.
New research has identified hexagonal diamonds (also called lonsdaleite) in a very rare class of meteorites. These might have come from the mantle on a dwarf planet. Like graphite and charcoal, lonsdaleite can be described as a special structural form of carbon. Instead of the cubic arrangement of diamond's carbon atoms, lonsdaleite's carbon atoms are in hexagonal shapes.
"This study proves categorically that lonsdaleite exists in nature," Dougal McCulloch, a microscopist at RMIT University in Australia, said in a
statement. "We have also discovered the largest lonsdaleite crystals known to date that are up to a micron in size — much, much thinner than a human hair."
By Awanish Kumar
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