Instead, they resulted when a parent body experienced a major impact causing smaller rock bodies to split from it. Their findings refute a commonly held hypothesis that the diamonds originate from the high-pressure mantle of the planet-sized bodies the meteorites came from. Scientists have long debated the origin of these diamonds.Īn international team of scientists, including researcher at the Saudi Aramco R&D Center and another at the University of Khartoum, Sudan, analysed samples from two ureilites, one that fell in the Nubian Desert in 2008 and another found in Morocco in 2013. Ureilites are rare meteorites that differ in mineral composition from other rocky meteorites, incorporating a significant percentage of carbon in the form of graphite and tiny diamonds. Some collisions formed larger worlds, while others created systems of planets and satellites like Earth and its moon.Analyses of samples from rare meteorites demonstrate how their diamonds likely formed during sudden impacts.įalse colour map from Raman spectroscopy showing diamonds (red) and graphite (blue) in a ureilite sample. Such planetary embryos got ejected from the solar system and either became rogue planets or smashed together. "Many planetary formation models have predicted that these planetary embryos existed in the first million years of our solar system, and the study offers compelling evidence for their existence," a press release from the Earth and Planetary Science Laboratory said. Specifically, the researchers think a rocky, proto-planet "embryo" at least 4,800 miles wide - which formed roughly 10 million years into the solar system's formation - made the diamonds found in asteroid 2008 TC 3. Because of that, they concluded the diamonds likely formed in an environment found only inside rocky planets. The images revealed inclusions (impurities) of sulfur, iron, and a mineral called chromite, as well as warping of the diamond crystal and nearby graphite.Īccording to the researchers, this means the diamonds formed at the extreme pressure of 20 gigapscals - about 180 times as crushing as the pressure found at the bottom of the Marianas Trench, the deepest point in Earth's oceans. This means the rock that fell to Earth nearly a decade ago was part of a "lost" planet formed - and completely destroyed - at the dawn of the solar system. Scientists now think those gems and the impurities found inside them could only come from the heart of a Mercury-to-Mars-size planet. Meteorite hunters recovered about 50 fragments, which researchers later named the "Almahata Sitta" collection after a nearby train station in Sudan.īut while many stony meteorites hail from Mars, these were peculiar: They contained a bunch of tiny diamonds. The stony meteorite, called asteroid 2008 TC 3, plunged through the atmosphere, exploded, and rained its pieces over the Nubian Desert in Africa. Asteroid TC 3, as it's called, may be the first pristine chunk of a "lost" planet ever recovered on Earth.Īfter a 4.5-billion-year journey through space, a car-size rock fell to Earth on October 7, 2008.Scientists think the planet was destroyed 4.5 billion years ago and was the size of Mercury or even Mars.The diamonds and impurities found inside them suggest the rock came from inside a planet.A meteorite that fell to Earth in October 2008 contained scores of small diamonds.
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