-Caveat Lector- Uranus, Neptune may be diamond mines By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Correspondent SAN FRANCISCO, Sept 30 (Reuters) - Uranus and Neptune may be giant diamond factories, pressing out millions of the precious stones under the pressure of billions of tons of hydrogen, researchers said on Thursday. Experiments that aimed to re-create the heat and pressure on the two planets produced tiny diamonds -- and what looked a lot like oil, Robin Benedetti and colleagues at the University of California at Berkeley reported in the journal Science. Benedetti and colleagues set up an experiment in which they tried to simulate the enormous pressures and heat that are believed to exist on Uranus and Neptune. Knowing there are large amounts of methane in their atmospheres, Benedetti used special equipment to subject the methane to the equivalent of the pressures on Uranus and Neptune -- 100,000 to 500,000 times the atmospheric pressure on Earth. ``I squeezed a little piece of methane between two diamonds,'' Benedetti, a graduate student studying planetary physics, said in an interview. Then she added heat. ``I shone an infrared laser onto it and I found a significant chemical reaction when it got hot...Some of the methane decomposed completely to carbon in diamond form.'' Methane is a molecule made up of four hydrogen atoms linked to a carbon atom. Some of the hydrogen in the methane broke away from the carbon, leaving the carbon to form pure diamonds. The hydrogen and a few of the carbon atoms that were left chained into hydrocarbons, Benedetti's team reported. She looked at the tiny diamonds in a microscope and also used a technique known as X-ray crystallography to image them. Spectral images of the soup she made showed the hydrocarbons were very similar to oil, she said, although she stressed it was not exactly like the fuel oil pumped on Earth. What was more interesting to Benedetti than the creation of two of the most precious minerals on Earth was the ability to model in the laboratory what is happening on a planet billions of miles (km) away. Once thought to be two big frozen, gassy blobs, Neptune and Uranus have, in recent years, shown themselves to be dynamic, interesting planets, both with rings like Saturn's. Astronomers have gleaned a lot of information from spectral images taken with telescopes, and from images collected by the Voyager 2 mission when the tiny spacecraft flew by the two planets. ``If you picture it in your mind, there is a big atmosphere of hydrogen and helium. Underneath that, there is a soup of water, ammonia and methane under pressure from the kilometres of hydrogen above,'' Benedetti said. The methane would be under so much pressure from the weight of the hydrogen and helium above that it would be solid, rather than in the gas form more common on Earth, she added. ``Either underneath or mixed in with the water and ammonia and methane there are rocks and metals and stuff.'' Benedetti said this was one of the first pictures anyone has drawn of what is actually going on in the outer planets. ``We used to just make these lists -- that inside these planets there is hydrogen and helium and ammonia and methane and water,'' she said. ``Now we know a little bit of what they are doing.'' DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. Proselyzting propagandic screeds are not allowed. Substance�not soapboxing! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory', with its many half-truths, misdirections and outright frauds is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRL gives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credeence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. ======================================================================== Archives Available at: http://home.ease.lsoft.com/archives/CTRL.html http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ ======================================================================== To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om
