The stone, called lonsdaleite, has a hardness and strength that surpasses that of ordinary diamonds. The rare mineral arrived here via a meteorite, according to new research.
The revelation began to emerge when geologist Andy Tomkins, a professor at Monash University in Australia, was outside the field of meteorite classification. Study co-author Alan Salk, a PhD student and researcher at RMIT University in Australia, said he found a strange type of “curved” diamond in a space rock in northwestern Africa.
Salk said Tomkins theorized that the meteorite carrying the Lonsdalite came from the mantle of a dwarf planet that existed about 4.5 billion years ago.
“The dwarf planet was then subjected to a catastrophic shock from an asteroid, which released the pressure and led to the formation of these really strange diamonds,” he added.
With cutting-edge methods and future possibilities, the discovery is exciting, said Paul Asimov, professor of geology and geochemistry at Caltech. Azimov was not involved in the study.
“It’s really taking advantage of a number of recent developments in microscopy to do what they did as they did,” Asimov said.
The team was able to analyze the meteorite with the help of electron microscopy and advanced synchrotron techniques, which made maps of the space body’s components, including losdaleite, diamond and graphite, according to the study.
Diamond and lonsdaleite can be formed in three ways. It can be through high pressure and temperature over a long period of time, this is what diamonds look like on the earth’s surface; high-speed meteor impact shock; Or by releasing vapors of fractured graphite that would stick to a small piece of diamond and build up on it, Asimov said.
He added that how the mineral is formed can affect its size. Researchers in this study suggested that the third method constituted the largest sample they found.
“Nature has given us a process to try to replicate in the industry,” Tomkins said in a press release. “We believe lonsdaleite can be used to make extra-rigid machine parts if we can develop an industrial process that promotes the replacement of preformed graphite parts with lonsdaleite.”
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What exactly is it?
Asimov said that long before this discovery, scientists discussed the existence of Lonsdalite.
He added: “It seems to be a strange claim that we have a name for something, and we all agree on what it is”, yet there are claims in society that it’s not real metal, not real crystal, that you can have a macroscopic scale ” .
Scientists first identified fragments of the mineral in 1967, but they were tiny – about 1 or 2 nanometers, which is 1,000 times smaller than those found in the latest discovery, Salk said.
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Asimow said the search for a larger sample showed that lonsdaleite is not just an anomaly of other diamonds.
Salk said ordinary diamonds, like diamonds seen in jewelry, are made of carbon and have a cubic atomic structure. Being the hardest material known to date, it is also used in manufacturing.
He added that the Lonsdalite is also made of carbon, but instead has an unusual hexagonal structure.
Salk said the researchers had modeled the lonsdaleite structure earlier and theorized that the hexagonal structure could make it 58 percent harder than regular diamond. This hardness could make rare space diamonds a valuable resource for industrial applications if scientists can find a way to use the new production method to produce sufficiently large minerals.
What does it mean for us?
Now that scientists know about this mineral, the discovery raises the question of whether they can replicate it.
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Salk said tools like saw blades, drill bits, and mining sites need to be permanently hard and wear-resistant, so a ready supply of lonsdaleite can make them perform better. And now, with a reliable scientific theory of how these large deposits formed, there is a rough plan for making lonsdaleite in the laboratory.
From this discovery, we can also learn more about the interactions of the universe, said Phil Sutton, a lecturer in astrophysics at the University of Lincoln in the UK. Sutton was not involved in the research.
Uncovering the history of where we came from and how we evolved, he added, it’s important to know that materials have been exchanged between environments, including through solar systems.
Scientists named Lonsdaleite in honor of crystallographer Dame Kathleen Lonsdale, who in 1945 became one of the first women elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of London.
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