Ground Report

Scientists have devised a way to use the Spitzer Space Telescope to find diamonds in space, which might help them to understand how carbon-rich molecules develop. According to a report in Discovery News, on Earth, diamonds form deep inside the planet, under high temperature and pressure. In space, the opposite conditions exist, with extremely low pressures and temperatures that dip to minus 240 degrees Celsius. In certain meteorites that have crashed to Earth, about 3% of the carbon inside is in the form of nanometer-sized diamonds. If the meteorites accureately reflect the composition of interstellar gas and dust, it would mean that every gram of cosmic cloud contains 100,000 trillion nanodiamonds. The research, which appears in an upcoming issue of Astrophysical Journal, indicates that the nanodiamonds should raidate brightly in the infrared wavelengths that the Spitzer Space Telescope is sensitive to.