Diamonds from outer space have opened a window into a potentially “lost planet”: According to multiple news reports, tiny diamonds in the Almahata Sitta meteorite, which exploded over the Nubian desert in Sudan ten years ago, were created deep inside a “lost planet” that once circled our sun.
According to scientists, the planet’s size was possibly between Mercury and Mars, and was formed in the first 10 million years of the solar system. The Almahata Sitta meteorite, which crashed into Earth in 2008, is studied at the Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, Switzerland, after the University of Khartoum gathered 4 kg of material.
In an article published in the Journal of Nature Communications, the Swiss team discusses fresh findings that show that the diamonds in the meteorite contain specks of iron-sulphur compound; this, they think, is indicative that the diamonds could only have been formed at pressures greater than 20 gigapascals. Their conclusion: the diamonds were created with the specks inside them, deep beneath the surface of a possible “lost world”.
