They call it super diamond because surpasses in hardness and strength those of the Earth. It was formed on an extinct planet and came to our world through a meteorite. As strange as it is mysterious, this is the Lonsdaleite.
It was Andy Tomkins, a geologist doing fieldwork in northwest Africa, who stumbled upon the mineral while researching meteorites, according to the report posted on the website. Urban Techno.
The Lonsdaleite it is an extremely hard form of diamond and scientists believe that diamonds on Earth originate through a different process.
Traditional diamonds originate when graphite is slowly squeezed out by pressures deep within the Earth’s mantle. For its part, lonsdaleite would form in the chaos of a catastrophic collision in interplanetary space.
The composition of Lonsdaleite
Its composition would also be different. If goods a crystal made of carbon, its structure retains the hexagonal shape of graphite, something that does not happen with terrestrial diamonds. In addition, it is much thinner than a human hair, which makes it difficult to analyze in laboratories.
It was in 1967 when a group of scientists found this strange material, identified in a very particular meteorite called ureilite.
Urelite would have originated on a dwarf planet that was long extinct, which could indicate that its remains are roaming the entire Solar System in the form of a meteorite.
The above supports the theory of the origin of the interstellar diamond, that would have been produced by collision and not by pressure like a terrestrial diamond. However, and curiously, other researchers have another hypothesis.
These scientists analyzed 18 samples of the ureilite meteorite by electron microscopy and concluded that lonsdaleite can form naturally and even in the laboratory. That leaves the door open to developing it on an industrial level and using it to make machine parts or rare rings.