Scientists Crush Diamonds with Lasers to Learn More About Massive Planets

Scientists are learning a bit more about the giant planets of our universe. They've experimentally re-created the conditions that exist deep within planets such as Jupiter and Uranus, revealing a bit more about these cosmic bodies.

The scientists focused on carbon, which is the fourth most abundant element in the universe, coming after hydrogen, helium, and oxygen. Carbon has an important role in many types of planets within and outside our solar system.

In order to examine conditions on giant planets a bit better, the scientists used the largest laser in the world to squeeze diamond samples to 50 million times Earth's atmospheric pressure. This is comparable to pressures that exist at the centers of Jupiter and Saturn. More specifically, the scientists used 176 lasers with exquisitely shaped energy versus time to produce a pressure wave that compressed the material for a short period of time.

So what happened? The diamond was vaporized in less than 10 billionths of a second. In addition, despite being the least compressible material known, the researchers were able to compress the diamond to an unprecedented density greater than lead at ambient conditions.

These pressures have only been reached before with shock waves that also create high temperatures. But these shock waves are not realistic for planetary interiors, which have lower temperatures. In order to create lower temperatures, the researchers made sure to carefully tune the rate at which the laser intensity changed with time.

'This new ability to explore matter at atomic scale pressures, where extrapolations of earlier shock and static data become unreliable, provides new constraints for dense matter theories and planet evolution models," said Rip Collins, one of the team members in the new study, in a news release.

The findings reveal a bit more about the interiors of massive planets, which could shed more light on the origins of these planets and have implications for other planetary bodies across the universe.

The findings are published in the journal Nature.