A study presented at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Houston revealed that Mercury’s surface could contain millions of tons of diamonds.
According to planetary scientist Kevin Cannon, gemstones could be the result of meteorite impacts several million years ago. He explained that this would have happened because the surface of Mercury is covered with graphite, one of the purest forms of carbon which is the fundamental basis of diamonds.
Point out that Product of the great pressures and heat exerted on the graphite, it became diamond..
According to the calculations presented in the study, One third of Mercury’s crust could have turned into diamondssomething that in practical terms can be almost impossible to imagine.
“We think Mercury started out with a thin graphite crust formed after it cooled from a global magma ocean. Asteroids and comets smashing into this crust at tens of miles per second create pressures high enough to turn graphite into diamond,” Cannon explained.
He adds that it is most likely that unlike the diamonds we know which have a relatively clear appearance, Mercury diamonds are opaque and similar to those used at an industrial level due to their high abrasiveness.
The expert added that although it is theoretically possible to mine this type of diamonds on Mercury, this would be such an expensive operation that it would not leave much profit margin. He also commented that It would not make much sense to try to exploit these deposits considering that scientists are currently capable of creating diamonds in laboratories..
Cannon also suggested that the BepiColumbo space mission, which is scheduled to reach the planet in 2025, will be able to explore the surface of Mercury and detect the diamonds that his model predicts to be found on the planet.
“It has complementary instruments to those of NASA’s Messenger mission, and they are much better at detecting certain minerals like this,” he said.
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