Houston. The smallest planet in the solar system may hide a big secret. Using data from NASA’s Messenger spacecraft, scientists have determined that Mercury, the planet closest to the sun, may have a 10-mile-thick diamond mantle beneath its crust. Also read: Kamal Vihar issue echoed in the House: BJP MLA raises question on issuing tender without changing land use
Mercury has long puzzled scientists because it has several properties that are not common to other planets in the Solar System, including its very dark surface, its remarkably dense core, and the premature end of Mercury’s volcanic era.
These puzzles include patches of graphite, an allotrope of carbon, on the surface of the solar system’s innermost planet. These patches have led scientists to suggest that Mercury had a carbon-rich magma ocean in its early history. This ocean may have floated to the surface, creating the graphite patches and Mercury’s dark surface.
This same process may have also led to the formation of a carbon-rich mantle beneath the surface. The team behind these findings believes that this mantle is not graphene, as previously suspected, but rather a diamond made from a more precious allotrope of carbon.
Olivier Namur, an associate professor at KU Leuven and a member of the team, explained, “We calculate that, given the new estimate of the pressure at the mantle-core boundary, and knowing that Mercury is a carbon-rich planet, the carbon-bearing mineral formed at the interface between the mantle and core is diamond, not graphite.” He added that our study uses geophysical data collected by NASA’s Messenger spacecraft.
MESSENGER (Mercury Surface, Space Environment, Geochemistry and Ranging) launched in August 2004 and became the first spacecraft to orbit Mercury. The mission, which ended in 2015, mapped the entire tiny world, discovered abundant water ice in the shadows at the poles and collected crucial data about Mercury’s geology and magnetic field.
