Creating Diamonds Out of Nothing (Or Peanut Butter)

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In the age of space exploration, it's almost a little ironic to think that we barely know about the insides of our Earth. Geology really is still an elementary subject, as we can barely drill beneath the Earth's surface. This is an obstacle that will have to be climbed over if we wish to understand the inner makings of Earth, and ultimately, how it formed and how/why it sustains life.

That is the goal of Dan Frost and his lab team the Bayerisches Geoinstitut in Germany. He mimics the conditions of Earth's lower mantle in order to get a grasp on how the Earth is composed. This means, essentially, crushing rocks at enormous amounts of pressure. He and his team do this in two processes: the first portrays the conditions of the upper portion of the lower mantle (around 500-562 miles below the Earth's surface) utilizes a powerful piston to squeeze tiny bits of crystals as they are cooked by a furnace. Then, an anvil further crushes these crystals to mimic the conditions of even deeper with the lower mantle. By the end, this applies a pressure 1.3 millions that of atmospheric pressure onto the crystals. 

A common theory today is that the Earth is made up of materials brought on by the striking of meteorites, but Frost's results are challenging that notion. The mantle does not seem to hold nearly as much silicon as found in meteorites, leading to the theory that Earth's silicon falls even deeper beyond the lower mantle, perhaps even all the way down to the core. 

So where do the diamonds come into play? These experiments could possibly tells us about the air that we breath. Frost speculates that CO2 is extracted out of oceans into rocks via a series of geological processses and are in turn converted into diamonds within the mantle. Iron could be the reason why this occurs, as oxygen is removed when the high pressures of the mantle forces CO2 from the rocks into the iron-rich minerals, leaving just carbon to form diamonds. So, naturally, Frost and his team have been attempting to create diamonds from carbon-rich peanut butter.

The implications of this, on the surface, is a entirely new way in extracting the most coveted gem on the planet. But this experiment is far more than that. It can explain the history of the formation of Earth, why it exists and thrives as a life-sustaining planet, and what it is actually made of! Diamonds are an extremely strong network of hydrocarbons and are much less likely to be released back into the atmosphere. Therefore, a diamond-coated mantle could explain the slowing of the warming of Earth, thus allowing life to prosper.