We don't want to give people the impression that we have a Titanic-sized diamondberg floating around
Recent data compiled by planetary scientists Mona L. Delitsky of California Specialty Engineering in Pasadena, California, and Kevin H. Baines of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has been combined with newly published pressure temperature diagrams of Jupiter and Saturn. These diagrams, known as adiabats, allow researchers to decipher at what interior level that diamond would become stable. They also allow for calculations at lower levels – regions where both temperature and pressure are so concentrated that diamond becomes a liquid. Imagine diamond rain or rivulets of pure gemstone.
While the idea of diamonds at the heart of planets like Uranus and Neptune has been known for at least three decades, planetary scientists have been hesitant to include Jupiter and Saturn, concluding they were either too cool, too hot, or otherwise not suitable for the production of solid diamonds. Just as Jupiter and Saturn are much warmer at their cores, Uranus and Neptune are much too cold to sustain diamonds in a liquid state. However, thanks to the latest data, researchers are confident that deep inside Saturn there may be diamonds so large that they could be referred to as “diamondbergs”
Diamonds may fall from the sky on the gas giants Jupiter and Saturn.
Astrophysicists have calculated that the conditions on the two biggest planets of the solar system are enough to produce stable oceans made from diamond.
They claim that powerful lightning storms in the planets’ atmospheres cause particles of carbon to form, which then drift down though the gas.
As the carbon falls, it is crushed by the enormous pressures that exist on the two planets, causing them to form dense chunks of diamond.
At even greater depths, the scientists say the diamond will eventually melt to form liquid diamond, which may then form a stable ocean layer.
More info can be had from
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/10/diamond-rain-jupiter-saturn-raining-diamonds_n_4078734.html
http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-diamonds-saturn-jupiter-melted-liquid-20131010,0,6503695.story
"Your mother was a hamster, and your father smelt of elderberrys!" -- Monty Python and the Holy Grail