The atmosphere of the ‘Lord of the rings,’ Saturn, hides a real treasure - the diamond showers that occur due to hurricane storms. What is the peculiar feature of this planet where precious stones fall from the sky?
Sometimes, reality trumps fiction. As the second-largest planet in the Solar System and the sixth one from the Sun, Saturn is a gaseous giant with a mass that is 95 times that of the Earth.
The conditions on Saturn and its chemical composition are so different from those on the Earth that atmospheric fallout is in the form of diamonds. Some scientists believe that up to 10 million tons of precious stones are formed annually in the atmosphere of this gas giant.
According to the Internet portal Tameteo.com, this happens due to the interaction of methane (CH4) present in the atmosphere of Saturn with storms. As a result, the carbon atoms bond together to create larger molecules that form a compound looking like soot. It is like a black cloud of car exhaust, which bears no resemblance to a diamond. However, this is only the beginning of its formation.
The relatively heavy new carbon molecules are attracted by the Saturn's gravitational field. The closer they come, the higher the temperature and pressure are that they are exposed to. These conditions give rise to the carbon transformation - when it settles, it turns into pieces of graphite at first and then into diamonds, 1 cm in diameter, which continue to descend to the core of the planet.
Could huge diamonds lie in the bowels of Saturn? This is not clear so far but some experts believe that the clouds of liquefied diamonds are more likely than large gems.
In addition, according to the scientists, if there were diamond deposits on Saturn, they would be in the thick mass of the planet where the temperature is over 3 000°C, and the pressure is a million times greater than on the Earth's surface.
Hence, the key question arises whether the robots would be able to withstand such environment taking into account that the extremely high pressure in the atmosphere of the gas giant would crush any spacecraft at the depths where diamonds are formed.
And they, alas, melt as they approach the core of Saturn.
Alex Shishlo for Rough&Polished
