From: Professor Paul Kreuger, FRS, etc. To: The Editor, NATURE Data Bank (Public access)
Subject: MOUNT ZEUS AND JOVIAN DIAMONDS
As is now well understood, the Europan formation known as 'Mount Zeus' was originally part of Jupiter.
The suggestion that the cores of the gas giants might consist of diamond was first made by Marvin Ross
of the University of California's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in a classic paper 'The ice layer in
Uranus and Neptune - diamonds in the sky?' (Nature, Vol 292, No. 5822, pp. 435-6, 30 July 1981).
Surprisingly, Ross did not extend his calculations to Jupiter.
The sinking of Mount Zeus has produced a veritable chorus of lamentations, all of which are totally
ridiculous - for the reasons given below.
Without going into details, which will be presented in a later communication, I estimate that the
diamond core of Jupiter must have had an original mass of at least 10^28 grams. This is ten billion times
that of Mount Zeus.
Although much of this material would doubtless have been destroyed in the detonation of the planet
and the formation of the - apparently artificial - sun Lucifer, it is inconceivable that Mount Zeus was the
only fragment to survive. Although much would have fallen back on to Lucifer, a substantial percentage
must have gone into orbit - and must still be there. Elementary perturbation theory shows that it will
return periodically to its point of origin. It is not, of course, possible to make an exact calculation, but I
estimate that at least a million times the mass of Mount Zeus is still orbiting in the vicinity of Lucifer. The
loss of one small fragment, in any case most inconveniently located on Europa, is therefore of virtually no
importance. I propose the establishment, as soon as possible, of a dedicated space-radar system to
search for this material.
Although extremely thin diamond film has been mass-produced since as long ago as 1982, it has never
been possible to make diamond in bulk. Its availability in megaton quantities could totally transform many
industries and create wholly new ones. In particular, as was pointed out by Isaacs et al almost a hundred
years ago (see Science, 151, pp. 682-3, 1966) diamond is the only construction material which would
make possible the so-called 'Space elevator', allowing transportation away from Earth at negligible cost.
The diamond mountains now orbiting among the satellites of Jupiter may open up the entire Solar
System; how trivial, by comparison, appear all the ancient uses of the quartic-crystallized form of carbon!
For completeness, I would like to mention another possible location for enormous quantities of
diamond - a place, unfortunately, even more inaccessible than the core of a giant planet...
It has been suggested that the crusts of neutron stars may be largely composed of diamond. As the
nearest known neutron star is fifteen light years away, and has a surface gravity seventy thousand million
times that of Earth, this can hardly be regarded as a plausible source of supply.
But then - who could ever have imagined that one day we would be able to touch the core of Jupiter?
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