Harder than earth diamonds! Super diamonds found in meteorites prove that space mining may make people rich
Diamonds are one of the most expensive substances in the world. Some diamonds sell for several times as much as gold. One gram costs thousands of dollars. Natural diamonds are formed by carbon atoms under enormous pressure inside the earth and are the hardest substances in the world. One, it is because of this that it is deeply loved by people. However, diamonds are not the hardest substance on earth now, because scientists have discovered a harder super diamond in a meteorite. If this super diamond can be turned into a commodity, the price must be high, and there must be a lot of money. The big chance exceeds the selling price of a diamond because it is harder. Recently, an international research team of Yiji discovered a crystal in a meteorite, which is the largest crystal scientists have found in a meteorite. Compared with the cubic structure, it is more rigid. Of course, this is not an ordinary meteorite, but a rare meteorite belonging to the ureilites class, which may contain mantle layers from dwarf planets. Scientists believe that the meteorite may have originated from a dwarf planet that catastrophically collided with an asteroid billions of years ago. In some kind of coincidence, the meteorite was caught by Earth's gravity and eventually fell to Earth, the vast and arid Nullarbor in southern Australia. Plains and Northwest Africa. The team, led by Andy Tomkins, professor of geology at Monash University, studied 18 samples of ureilites, of which lonsdaleite super diamonds were found in four samples, all from northwest Africa, not from Nullarbor Plain in southern Australia. Using advanced electron microscopy techniques, Tomkins and colleagues took a closer look at meteorite slices and found that lonsdaleite superdiamonds may have appeared in dwarf planets shortly after a catastrophic collision, where supercritical fluids maintain the shape and texture of graphite at high temperatures and pressures , but turned into a super diamond after cooling and depressurizing. This new discovery gives us the opportunity to mimic the process of producing this unusual mineral, Tomkins said: "If we can develop an industrial process that facilitates the replacement of pre-formed graphite parts with lonsdaleite, then lonsdaleite could be used to make Tiny, super-hard machine parts. This new discovery proves that space meteorites contain rich resources. Prophets have predicted before that the next trillionaire on earth may come from the space mining industry. If someone finds a meteorite containing a large number of lonsdaleite super diamonds, That would surely be the richest man in the world. Today in the 21st century, space mining has actually started, but it is just a trial mining. For example, my country's Chang'e 5 retrieved lunar samples, Japan's Hayabusa spacecraft retrieved asteroid minerals, and the United States is planning to return to Mars samples. A new era of space mining is coming.
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