Long before this discovery, scientists have debated the existence of lonsdaleite, Asimow said. 'We think that lonsdaleite could be used to make tiny, ultra-hard machine parts if we can develop an industrial process that promotes replacement of pre-shaped graphite parts by lonsdaleite.' 'Nature has thus provided us with a process to try and replicate in industry,' Tomkins said in a news release. Researchers proposed in this study that the third method formed the larger sample that they had found. The method that creates the mineral can influence its size, he added. It can be through high pressure and temperature over a long period of time, which is how diamonds form on the Earth's surface the shock of a hypervelocity collision of a meteor or the release of vapors from broken-up graphite that would attach to a small diamond fragment and build upon it, Asimow said. The team was able to analyze the meteorite with the help of electron microscopy and advanced synchrotron techniques, which built maps of the space object's components, including lonsdaleite, diamond and graphite, according to the study.ĭiamonds and lonsdaleite can form in three ways. 'It really takes advantage of a number of recent developments in microscopy to do what they did as well as they did it,' Asimow said. With its cutting-edge methods and possibilities for the future, the discovery is exciting, said Paul Asimow, a professor of geology and geochemistry at the California Institute of Technology. 'The dwarf planet was then catastrophically struck by an asteroid, releasing pressure and leading to the formation of these really strange diamonds,' he added.

Tomkins theorized the meteorite that held the lonsdaleite came from the mantle of a dwarf planet that existed about 4.5 billion years, Salek said. He came across a strange 'bended' kind of diamond in a space rock in Northwest Africa, said study co-author Alan Salek, a doctoral student and researcher at RMIT University in Australia. The revelation started to unfold when geologist Andy Tomkins, a professor at Monash University in Australia, was out in the field categorizing meteorites. What's more, the natural chemical process through which scientists believe lonsdaleite formed could inspire a way to manufacture super-durable industrial components, according to the authors of the study published September 12 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The rare mineral arrived here by way of a meteorite, new research has suggested. The stone, called lonsdaleite, has a hardness and strength that exceeds that of a regular diamond. Now, researchers have confirmed the existence of a celestial diamond after finding it on Earth's surface.

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