Mars gets all the buzz, but Mercury just gained some bragging rights among the planets—a new study suggests it may have a layer of diamonds 9 miles thick, located deep below its surface, reports Live Science. These diamonds exist only in theory at the moment, but the study in Nature Communications lays out the possibility in detail. The idea stems from the revelation provided by NASA's Messenger spacecraft that Mercury has large amounts of graphite, a form of carbon, on its surface, per the Economic Times.
"It made me realize that something special probably happened within its interior," says study co-author Yanhao Lin of Beijing's Center for High Pressure Science and Technology Advanced Research in a news release. In a lab, Lin's team simulated the creation of the planet's core-mantle boundary, or CMB, complete with "chemical soups" of iron, silica, and carbon, along with an anvil press to apply huge amounts of pressure, per Live Science. They also simulated Mercury's extreme temperatures, which NASA notes can swing from 800 degrees Fahrenheit during the day to nearly 300 degrees below zero at night.
When all was said and done, the team concluded that the conditions could well have created the thick layer of diamonds within the planet that is the smallest in our solar system and closest to the sun, per Interesting Engineering. Alas, the chances of Earthlings mining the theoretical diamonds are pretty much nil considering they would lie some 300 miles below the surface. But scientists are still enthused because the discovery could unlock current mysteries about Mercury and its formation, including why it has a magnetic field. (More Mercury stories.)
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