Mercury could be a real treasure planet full of coveted diamonds. Billions of years of meteorite impacts may have turned much of Mercury’s surface in brilliant gemstones. A series of computer simulations predict that such impacts may have transformed about a third of the tiny planet’s crust into a diamond reservoir several times larger than Earth’s.
Diamonds are forged under immense pressures and temperatures. On earth, gemstones crystallize deep underground – at least 150 kilometers deep – and then come to the surface during volcanic eruptions. But studies of meteorites suggest that diamonds can also form during an impact.
Mercury surface studies and molten rock experimentsa suggest that the planet’s crust may retain fragments of an ancient shell of graphite, a mineral made of carbon. “What we think happened is that when [Mercurio] it first formed, it had a magma ocean, and that graphite crystallized out of that magma,” says Cannon.
Mercury’s current surface is heavily cratered, which shows a history rich in impacts. Much of the supposed graphite crust would have been beaten and transformed into diamondas reported in Science News.