Diamonds are forever... on Uranus and Neptune
Astronomers reckon the two ice giants of our solar system - Uranus and Neptune - may have diamond icebergs floating atop liquid diamond seas.
The surprise finding comes from the first detailed measurements of the melting point of diamond, Discovery News reports.
Scientists zapped diamond with a laser at pressures 40 million times greater than the Earth's atmosphere at sea level, and then slowly reduced both temperature and pressure.
They eventually found that diamond behaves like water during freezing and melting, and that chunks of diamond will float in the liquid diamond.
Diamond oceans could explain why the magnetic fields of Uranus and Neptune appear tilted so far off their north-south axes, given they could deflect or tilt the magnetic fields.
Both planets may consist of up to ten percent carbon, the elemental building block of diamond.
Scientists won't know for sure until they can launch missions to the planets, or try to simulate planetary conditions on Earth, although it might be worth an adventurous entrepreneur taking a punt!
Weird Science Factoid: Thirty-five per cent of people using personal ads for dating are already married. Tut tut...
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Daniel Smith - a long time ago, in a galaxy far away just north of Watford, Daniel fancied himself as a scientist but turned out to be the worst scientist since that bloke who mapped out all those canals on Mars that turned out to be scratches on his telescope's lens. Luckily, he is now not working on the Large Hadron Collider inadvertently creating a black hole that would swallow the world but is safely behind a desk writing this blog, bringing you the fantastical underbelly of nature... weird science.
