Would you believe it if I say there are planets where diamond falls from the sky? I guess you won’t. But, scientists suspected diamond rain on Uranus and Neptune.
Around 40 years ago, they sent Voyage 2 to study these icy gaints and came through this phenomenon.
It is completely magical and something we humans have never imagined. But, how’s that even possible? Scientists have come up with a proper explanation for the event.
Mystery Behind Diamond Rain on Uranus and Neptune
via:bgr
To understand this unique rain phenomenon, you must learn a bit about its compositions. Both the planets are made of icy materials- water, ammonia, and methane. Uranus gets its blue-green color from methane which is a series of hydrocarbons.
Beside composition, these planets have three layers- core, mantle, and outermost layer. Each layer has different elements, temperature and pressure level.
At the core, the temperature is pretty high ( 7000 kelvins) and pressure reach upto 6 million times of that at Earth.
On the other hand, temperature and pressure are not so extreme at outermost layer of Uranus and Neptune. Thus, they seem as ice giants to astronomers.
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The diamond rain phenomenon happens because of methane. Deep in the atmosphere where temperature and pressure is extreme, this colorless and odorless gas break down into molecules of carbon. They form a long chain converting itself into crystals of diamonds.
And as they get heavier, it becomes difficult to stay in atmosphere so they fall down to the ground. This phenomenon gives rise to diamond rain.
However, it seems an unreal thing because something has never happened on Earth or other planets. But, this explanation of scientists are more valid. Scientist Marvin Ross of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory introduced this for the first time in the 1981.
It was mentioned in the paper “The Ice Layer of Uranus and Neptune—Diamonds in the Sky”. In 2017, scientists recreated the diamond rain in lab to confirm their speculations and published the results in Nature Communication journal.