Scientists use laser flashes to make tiny diamonds out of plastic bottles

In a breakthrough, scientists have used laser flashes to make tiny diamonds out of plastic bottles and even suggested that it could be raining diamonds on planets throughout the universe. The research is published in Science Advances.

Scientists have used common plastic to recreate the precipitation believed to form deep inside Uranus and Neptune. The strange phenomenon of making diamonds could help to limit plastic waste on the planet also.

In the past, scientists theorised that extremely high pressure and temperatures turn hydrogen and carbon into solid diamonds thousands of kilometres below the surface of the ice giants. In the latest research, scientists have found that "diamond rain" could be more common than thought.

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Dominik Kraus, who is a physicist at Germany's HZDR research lab, said that diamond precipitation was quite different to rain on Earth. Kraus is one of the study's authors.

The process of creating the nanodiamonds is not easy, it required extraordinarily high pressures. The research team found the necessary mix of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen in a readily available source, PET plastic. For the unversed, PET is used for everyday food packaging and bottles.

Siegfried Glenzer at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in California and his colleagues found that by using the mentioned plastic, diamonds can be made in much less extreme conditions.

Kraus said that while the researchers used very clean PET plastic, "in principle the experiment should work with Coca-Cola bottles".

"Very, very short X-ray flashes of incredible brightness" allowed them to watch the process of nanodiamonds - tiny diamonds too small to see with the naked eye - as they formed, Kraus said.

"The oxygen that is present in large amounts on those planets really helps suck away the hydrogen atoms from the carbon, so it's actually easier for those diamonds to form," he added.

Experts believe that ice giants like Neptune and Uranus are thought to be the most common form of planet outside our Solar System. It means that strange diamond rain could be occurring across the universe.

(With inputs from agencies)

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