BBC: Based on chemical analyses of Saturn’s atmosphere, carbon is abundant and may rain down on the planet in the form of diamonds, according to Mona Delitsky of California Specialty Engineering and Kevin Baines of the University of Wisconsin–Madison, who presented their findings at last week’s meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Denver, Colorado. Lightning storms in the planet’s atmosphere create carbon soot from methane. As the soot falls toward Saturn’s rocky core, the increasingly high pressures and temperatures could turn the soot first into graphite and eventually into diamonds. The extreme heat at the core then could melt the diamonds, forming liquid diamond raindrops. The pair’s findings, while intriguing, are only preliminary. More data are needed, particularly concerning the large quantities of hydrogen and helium in Saturn’s atmosphere and how their presence would affect any chemical transformations.
