TECH

Space diamonds fallen in the desert are disappeared planet
The diamonds found in a meteorite that exploded in the Nubian desert in Sudan in 2008 were formed inside a lost planet that orbited the sun at the beginning of the solar system.Microscopic analysis of small diamonds inside the meteorite shows that they were formed in a high pressure environment and are likely to originate in deep layers of the planet.The mysterious planet where the diamonds have formed will have a dimension comprised between the dimensions of Mercury and Mars. One of the hypotheses raised by several astronomers points to several planets have formed in the first ten million years of the solar system.The great majority of these planets will have collided with each other in a violent manner, creating the conditions for the formation of the planets that currently orbit the Sun. If the clues now raised are confirmed, the meteorite Almahata Sitta will be the only evidence of these missing planets.The material now collected gives scientists the possibility to study the cosmic conditions existing in the beginning of the solar system."Several simulations show that at the beginning of the solar system there were several planets that collided until the terrestrial ones were formed," said Farhang Nabiei, a researcher at the Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne. "I never thought it possible to prove one of them, in Switzerland."We are doing archeology, looking back, in order to better understand the history of the formation of the solar system," added Philippe Gillet, who participated in this study.The meteorite Almahata Sitta was first identified near Earth just before it exploded in the desert in 2008. The University of Khartoum was able to collect 480 particles of the meteorite in a total of four kilograms.

Source: jn.pt