It’s raining diamonds on Neptune, snow on Mars

Sparkling diamond rain thought to fall on Neptune and Uranus has been created in the laboratory for the first time by scientists.

The team recreated conditions deep inside the icy giant planets by bombarding carbon-rich polystyrene with extreme soundwaves and watched as tiny diamonds formed. The research was published in Nature Astronomy.

In a separate study, scientists found that it snows on Mars. Computer modelling suggests that ‘microbursts’ of snowfall can occur due to the cooling of cloud ice particles during the night. The research was published in Nature Geoscience.