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They succeeded in creating fine diamonds by shooting a high-energy laser on a plastic bottle. It is estimated that the same process occurred on giant ice planets such as Uranus and Neptune, causing a mysterious phenomenon that has not been understood until now. / Stanford Accelerator Research Institute |
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A plastic bottle, which was considered only garbage, was hit by a high-energy laser and transformed into a diamond. It is assumed that the same thing happens with Uranus and Neptune, causing heat and magnetic fields that are difficult to occur on icy planets. In addition, there is an expectation that industrial diamonds can be easily produced in the same way on Earth.
Professor Dominic Klaus of the University of Rostock, Germany, and Dr. Siegfried Glezner of the Stanford Institute of Linear Accelerators in the U.S. joint research team wrote in the international academic journal Science Advance on the 3rd, “By firing a high-energy laser at plastic PET, fine diamonds at a lower pressure than before. succeeded in creating a
◇Diamond formation at one-fifth the pressure of the Earth’s core
PET is an abbreviation of ‘polyethylene terephthalate’ and is a polymer material made of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen. It is widely used in beverage bottles. Diamond is a crystal in which carbon atoms are connected in a cubic lattice structure. Carbon can be transformed into diamond by creating the same lattice structure wherever it comes from.
The research team fired a high-energy laser at the PET, raising the temperature to 3200 to 5800 degrees Celsius. The shock wave triggered by the laser raised the pressure to 72 gigaPascals. This is equivalent to one-fifth of the Earth’s nuclear pressure. As a result of the experiment, as hydrogen and oxygen fell from the carbon in PET, diamonds with a size of several nanometers (one nanometer is one billionth of a meter) were created. At the same time, hydrogen ions were released from the water molecules to produce super-ionized water. In super-ionized water, hydrogen ions float freely and current flows better than normal water.
Researchers at Stanford University previously announced in ‘Nature Astronomy’ in 2017 that they had succeeded in converting plastic into diamond under high-temperature and high-pressure environments. This experiment was successful at a lower pressure than before. A path has been opened for plastic bottles, which were thought only of garbage, to be transformed into industrial diamonds used for abrasives, electronic devices, sensors, and medical devices.
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A laser device that transforms a plastic bottle into a diamond./Stanford Linear Accelerator Research Center |
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◇Diamond rain on a giant ice planet
In particular, PET has oxygen unlike the materials used before. Giant ice planets such as Uranus and Neptune also contain large amounts of oxygen along with carbon and hydrogen. “Pet has a good balance of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen like an icy planet,” Klaus said.
“If diamond formation can be produced at a lower temperature than previously thought, the same thing might happen inside the hydrocarbon-rich Uranus and Neptune or Saturn’s moon Titan,” Glezner said.
If diamonds are formed in Neptune’s mantle and sink into the core like rain, it can collide with other materials inside, generating frictional heat. This might explain why the icy planet Neptune is hot. In addition, the magnetic field of Uranus can be understood as a result of the flow of electric current in the super-ionized water from the diamond formation process.
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When a high-energy laser is fired on a plastic bottle, the temperature rises to more than 6,000 degrees Celsius, and a shock wave with a pressure of millions of atmospheric pressure is generated, creating fine diamonds. It is assumed that the same thing happens in the nuclei of Uranus and Neptune./HZDR |
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The researchers plan to apply the results of this experiment to studying the giant icy planets that make up most of the exoplanets. The largest number of exoplanets discovered so far is Neptune, accounting for 35%. The outermost planets of our solar system are frozen giant planets like Uranus and Neptune. Next are super-terrestrial planets, which account for 31%, and gas giants, which account for 30%.
In addition, they decided to seek ways to collect fine diamonds made from plastic bottles and use them for industrial purposes. Dr. Glezner said, “In the past, diamonds were made at such high pressure, so they often broke apart later.
Lee Young-wan, science reporter ([email protected])
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