• Question: Does it really rain diamonds on Neptune?

    Asked by anon-278139 on 2 Feb 2021.
    • Photo: Michael Nolan

      Michael Nolan answered on 2 Feb 2021:

      While this appears to be the case, we have to be careful. Its not raining as in the wet stuff that falls from the sky on Earth! What this phenomenon is about is diamonds forming and “raining” on the core of Neptune and Uranus. This is an example of hype winning over reality!

      The pressure in Neptune and Uranus is rather high, and water, methane and other hydrocarbons are highly abundant. The pressure on these plants is high enough to squeeze these molecules into a dense “liquid” and thus, under the right conditions, into diamond!
      A paper exploring this was published not so long ago: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-16426-y and a good explanation is here: https://www.popularmechanics.com/space/satellites/a32999527/why-neptune-uranus-rain-diamonds/

      I think Arthur C. Clarke also used this in the third book of the 2001 A Space Odyssey series (2061).

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