An artist's illustration of a protoplanet. (Credit: Pavel Gabzdyl/Shutterstock) Diamonds found in meteorites on Earth may have come from an ancient long-dead planet the size of Mercury or Mars, the first potential known relics from these lost worlds, a new study finds. Scientists examined a ureilite, a kind of meteorite that is rich in carbon and sometimes even possesses diamonds. More than 480 ureilites have been discovered so far, says study lead author Farhang Nabiei, a materials scientist and electron microscopist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne.
Specifically, the researchers investigated the Almahata Sitta ureilite, which fell to Earth in 2008 in the Nubian Desert in Sudan. They analyzed diamonds within the ureilite that were a few dozen to a few hundred microns large. (In comparison, the average human hair is about 100 microns wide.)
A piece of the Almahata Sitta ureilite. (Credit: Wikimedia Commons) Previous explanations ...
