The Diamonds of Mercury?
Given its proximity to the Sun’s raging inferno, Mercury has always been considered more or less a crater-studded wasteland. But a team of scientists now says the meteors that le all those craters may have le a veritable blanket of diamonds!
Diamonds are carbon. So is graphite. A key dierence is their crystal structure. Graphite has a platy, hexagonal structure, which makes it one of the soest minerals. Diamonds have a rigid cubic structure that makes them the hardest of minerals. Subjected to intense heat and pressure, graphite converts to diamond. On Earth, that conversion usually occurs more than 100 miles beneath the surface, and diamonds are then transported up via volcanic vents or pipes. But diamonds also have been known to form on the surface as a result of the heat and pressure of meteor impacts.
In a report delivered at the Lunar & Planetary Science Conference, Kevin Canon (Colorado School of Mines in Golden) contends that in its early days, Mercury sported a graphite-rich crust. Via computer simulations, Canon demonstrated the eects of 4.5 billion years of impacts by meteors, asteroids and other space debris on such a crust. e result? Potentially, as many as 16 quadrillion tons of diamonds!