Black diamond comes from the universe, does not it?

Black diamonds, which only appear in some places on Earth, can come from meteorites a few kilometers in diameter in the universe, US scientists claim. Black diamonds, also known as carbonado, are found only in Brazil and Central African Republic. Unlike regular diamonds, they are constituted by the association of millions of diamond crystals.

The strange thing is that black diamonds have porous and porous surfaces. Scientists say rocks at depths of 200 km below the ground cannot keep the air inside them. The extreme pressure there turns carbon into a traditional diamond.

"This is a feature that makes us think that undeveloped black diamonds , " said Stephen Haggerty, a geologist at Florida International University, Miami, USA.

Because black diamonds are only found in two places on the planet and have never appeared in conventional diamond mines, some scientists think they originated in the universe.

Haggerty believes that they came from a meteorite that fell on Earth a few billion years ago - when the blue planet and the Moon were heavily devastated by " sky rocks ". Therefore, the age of black diamonds ranges from 2.6 to 3.8 billion years.

At the same time, South America and Africa were a unified continent. This explains why black diamonds only appear on those two continents, Haggerty said.

Black diamonds found in Brazil may come from outer space. (Photo by Steve Haggerty)

Haggerty and colleagues believe that black diamonds were once part of a super-massive star several billion years ago. Using an accelerator at Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York, they discovered hydrogen in black diamonds. This shows that they come from a hydrogen-rich place in the universe.

When the supernova explodes, diamond dust is released and becomes part of the cloud of gas that forms our solar system. Over time, they condensed into large blocks and adhered to meteorites, Haggerty explained. That's why the spectrum of black diamonds has the same parameters as diamonds found in meteorites, as well as diamonds observed in the universe.

Viet Linh