If I was Dr. Evil, looking for a way to become fabulously wealthy, I'd pay pretty close attention to this news. Scientists are increasingly convinced that cosmic dust clouds are full of tiny diamonds, and that now they've figured out a way to spot them.
Granted, we're not talking the Hope Diamond here. Or the Pink Panther. What's likely is that dust clouds in space are full of so-called nanodiamonds, about 25,000 times smaller than a grain of sand, far too small to see with the naked eye.
Scientists first understood these existed after studies of meteorites in the 1980s revealed the presence of these nano-scale diamonds, comprising as much as 3 percent of the space-stones' makeup. Based on these studies, they've calculated that a single gram of interstellar dust could contain as many as 10,000 trillion nanodiamonds.
Are you listening, Dr. Evil?
The question being, of course, why haven't we seen them before, even in the aggregate?
Researchers studying the question say this is likely because we simply haven't known how to look. We haven't known enough about infrared or electronic properties to spot them in telescope images before. But that may be changing.
Led by Ames Research Center astronomer Charles Bauschlicher, a team of researchers created a computer program simulating the conditions of nanodiamonds in outer space, deriving a likely infrared signature that would be given off when the tiny particles are struck by light from nearby stars.
This signature would be visible using the Spitzer space telescope's infrared spectrometer, they say. So an answer to the question of whether the heavens are really filled with glittering diamonds may soon be on its way.
Next up? Figuring out how the diamonds were created in the first place.
Earth diamonds are created under extreme pressure and high temperatures, while these space diamonds seem to exist in clouds of molecular gas, at pressures billions of times lower, and temperatures near negative 400 degrees Fahrenheit.
Spitzer's Eyes Perfect for Spotting Diamonds in the Sky [NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory]
(Image: Artist's conception of tiny diamonds floating near a star. Not actual size. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)
