The Planets Where it Rains Solid Diamonds
Deep inside Jupiter and Saturn, the sky literally rains gemstones as large as hail.
On Jupiter and Saturn, the atmosphere is so extreme that it turns soot into solid diamonds. It starts as methane gas in the upper atmosphere, which gets hit by lightning and turned into clouds of black soot.
As this soot falls toward the core, the atmospheric pressure increases to over 100,000 times that of Earth. This massive weight crushes the carbon into graphite and then eventually into hard, solid diamonds.
In the deepest layers of these planets, these diamond hailstones are estimated to be about a centimeter in diameter. Scientists believe that roughly 1,000 tons of diamonds are produced on Saturn every single year.
However, you can't go there to collect them. Once the diamonds fall deep enough, the heat becomes so intense that they actually melt. At the very core, it is likely that there are literal oceans of liquid carbon, create a permanent cycle of solid gems turning back into a metallic soup.
On Neptune and Uranus, the pressure is even higher, which might lead to the formation of "diamond icebergs" floating on seas of liquid diamond.
The Sky Screams Liquid Diamonds
On Neptune and Uranus, the atmosphere is so heavy it crushes methane gas into solid diamonds that sink like hailstones.
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