I ’ve always said peanut butter is a lady friend ’s best friend , and now there ’s substantiation . While try on to mimic the extreme term found deeply beneath the Earth ’s Earth’s surface , a research worker turn one of the most democratic sandwich condiment into a center even more valuable , if less tasty : diamond .
Dan Frost , a research scientist at the Bayerisches Geoinstitut , University of Bayreuth , Germany , need to know what ’s go on in the Earth ’s lower pall , which sits 1800 mile below the surface and is fairly of a mystery to researcher . We know it ’s very live ( temperatures may progress to 4000 stage Fahrenheit ) and under an unbelievable amount of pressure ( 237,000 timesatmospheric pressureis a scurvy idea ) . We also screw the blanket is where diamonds areformed . These precious gems are composed of atomic number 6 atoms that have been heat and squeezed and then pushed toward the Earth ’s surface , where they cool . In render to mime the conditions of the mantle , Frost successfully created synthetic diamonds in a research laboratory . His beginning of carbon ? I ’ll give you a hint : it pairs well with jelly .
He placed some peanut butter between two diamonds ( this is called the “ stiletto heel outcome ” ) and compressed the loopy stuff . Why the diamonds ? They ’re incredibly heavily , thanks to their closely - linked carbon atoms , and can hold up the necessary amount of press for the experiment , which is about 1.3 million times that of our atmosphericpressure .
The result is a baseball diamond where a peanut used to be , albeit a paltry and not entirely pure one . “ A mess of hydrogen was discharge that ruin the experimentation , ” Frost secernate theBBC,“but only after it had been converted to diamond . ”
This actually is n’t the first prison term this has been done . research worker at Edinburgh University produced similar solution back in2007.“Many carbon - containing material can be converted into ball field including goober pea butter , " said Edinburgh University’sMalcolm McMahon . And diamonds are already cook up synthetically , mostly for industrial exercise in bring forth grinding or cutting dick that gain from the stuff ’s hardness .
Frost hopes his experiment will lead not to cheaper diamonds , but larger knowledge about the intimate workings of our planet . “ If we want to understand how the Earth was formed , then one of the things you need to know is what satellite is made out of , ” hesaid .
