This is opening the door to study of the interesting types of chemical reactions taking place inside planets and brown dwarfs, Jeanloz said. Now that technology is able to reproduce the high pressures and temperatures found there, we are getting much better quality information on the chemical reactions taking place under these conditions.
It is not amazing that chemistry like this happens inside planets, its just that most people havent dealt with the chemical reactions that can occur, Benedetti said. The interior of these planets may be much more complicated that our current picture.
A simple calculation, for example, shows that the energy released by diamonds settling to the planets core could account for the excess heat radiated by Neptune, that is, the heat given off by Neptune in excess of what it receives from the sun.
Whats exciting to us is the application of this high-pressure chemistry to understanding the outer planets, Jeanloz said.
As more planets are found in unexpected orbits around other stars, the effects of internal chemical processes will need to be further clarified in order to obtain a general understanding of planet formation and evolution, the authors concluded in the Science paper.
Our solar systems other gas giant planets -- Jupiter and Saturn -- may also contain diamonds produced under such conditions, though they contain proportionately less methane than Neptune and Uranus. Based on theoretical calculations, Neptune and Uranus are estimated to contain about 10 to 15 percent methane under an outer atmosphere of hydrogen and helium. , or about 100,000 - 500,000 times atmospheric pressure. The researchers then heated the compressed methane with an infrared laser to about 2,000 to 3,000 Kelvin .
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