A mysterious diamond from an ancient dwarf planet found its way to Earth surface’s, researchers from the Australia and the United Kingdom have confirmed in a recent study.
It all began when Andy Tomkins, geologist and professor at Australia’s Monash University, was doing fieldwork categorising meteors, CNN reported. In a space rock in Africa’s north west, he detected a peculiar “bended” diamond.
Upon further study, what was found in the meteorite was a rare hexagonal stone called lonsdaleite.
Researchers proposed that lonsdaleite formed “from a supercritical fluid at high temperature and moderate pressures”.
“Later, lonsdaleite was partially replaced by diamond as the environment cooled and the pressure decreased,” Tomkins was quoted as saying in an article published by RMIT University, one of the partners in the research.
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