Diamonds from space may be from ‘lost planet’
Diamonds in a meteorite that exploded over Sudan in 2008 provide compelling evidence of a ‘lost planet’ that once existed at least four billion years ago in our solar system, scientists say. Researchers from Switzerland, France and Germany examined a slice of a so-called Almahata Sitta meteorite which exploded over Sudan’s Nubian Desert in 2008. The Almahata Sitta meteorites are mostly ureilites, a rare type of stony meteorite that often contains clusters of nano-sized diamonds. The diamonds in the meteorite had chromite, phosphate, and iron-nickel sulfides embedded in them, known as “inclusions”, the Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL) said in a statement on Tuesday. These have been known for a long time to exist inside diamonds found on Earth, but this is the first time that they have been encountered in an extra-terrestrial body. It is thought that these tiny diamonds can form in three ways: enormous pressure shockwaves from high-energy collisions between the meteorite ...