Is it really raining diamonds on Saturn and Uranus?

In the year 1999, it was hypothesized that diamonds were deposited on the surface of Neptune and Uranus. Now however, a new set of reports have materialized hinting that Saturn and Jupiter can coalesce with the aforementioned jewel too.

Diamonds All Over the Solar System

New research indicate that while solid diamond particles maybe scattered on the surface of these planets, it would adopt a more liquid form closer to the core. This could thus result in small pools of molten diamonds.

Neptune and Uranus have been theorized to be receiving continual diamond rainfall for a long time now. However, now with new studies indicating the same on Saturn and Jupiter, diamonds are all over the place. Weather phenomenon on these planets turns methane into soot, which hardens as it falls down on the planets’ surface – ended us as diamond.

However, before you get too excited, this is what Mona Delitsky, planetary scientist of California Specialty Engineering, has to say –

“We don’t want to give people the impression that we have a Titanic-sized diamondberg floating around. We’re thinking they’re more like something you can hold in your hand.” 

Maybe you really should get excited.

So how exactly are these diamonds formed?

“We know that inside the clouds on Saturn is pure carbon,” Baines, a scientist at University of Wisconsin-Madison and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, told Weather.com. “There’s gravity there so obviously those solid carbon particles have to rain down. So when they get down deep enough they should turn into diamonds. It all kind of just fell naturally from thunderstorms on Saturn.”

According to Baines, 1000 tonnes of diamonds are raining down on Saturn every year. Baines has presented his unpublished findings at the annual meeting of the Division for Planetary Sciences of the American Astronomical Society in Denver, Colorado.

Now, speculations are rife that diamonds maybe present in Venus and Mars as well.
So while the rest of the Solar System gets to revel in a sleet of diamonds, we’re pretty much stuck with water.