Scientists Find Diamonds With Rare Shapes In Meteorites That Fall To Earth Billions Of Years Ago

The diamond was found in a meteorite that was likely created when an asteroid collided with a dwarf planet (Diamond Photo Illustration/Unsplash (Daniele)

JAKARTA - Scientists have just detected the presence of a diamond with a very rare shape, it is claimed that it came from outer space through an asteroid.

The diamond was found in a meteorite that was likely created when an asteroid collided with a dwarf planet billions of years ago from northwest Africa.

The material found is known as lonsdaleite, and like diamond, is made of carbon. The difference is that the crystal structure is arranged in a hexagonal pattern, so lonsdaleite is referred to as a hexagonal diamond.

Lonsdaleite is scientifically interesting because the material can be harder than regular diamonds, meaning it has all kinds of industrial applications.

The findings led scientists to investigate 18 ureilite fragments using state-of-the-art electron microscopy, to better understand how lonsdaleite formed in space rocks. Their research has been published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

"This study clearly proves that lonsdaleite exists in nature," said study co-author Dougal McCulloch, director of the Microscopy and Microanalysis Facility at RMIT in Australia.

Previously, Lonsdaleite has been found in meteorites, including the Diablo Canyon meteorite, a fragment found in the Arizona Meteor Crater. This mineral has also been created in the laboratory, but is otherwise increasingly rare on Earth.

Scientists have known about lonsdaleite for at least half a century, having found it in meteorite samples, but the amounts found were minuscule with crystals measuring only nanometers.

Now they say they have discovered a large amount of material hidden within the meteorite sample, with some crystals about 1,000 times larger than previously found.

Another member of the team, Nick Wilson, who discovered lonsdaleite in African meteorite samples, said the new find could allow scientists to alter existing diamond production processes to produce lonsdaleite instead.

"So nature seems to have given us clues on how to make ultra-hard micro-machine parts. If we can find a way to replicate the processes preserved in meteorites, we can make these machine parts by replacing pre-formed graphite with lonsdaleite," Wilson told The Conversation.