It May be Raining Men on Earth, but it’s Raining Diamonds on Neptune

Dominik Kraus and his team of physicists have discovered that polyethylene terephthalate (PET) generates nanodiamonds when compressed to a million times Earth’s atmospheric pressure and applied with intense heat.

The study parallels the physical and chemical environments of ice planets in our solar system, implying that it rains diamonds in Neptune and Uranus.
Additionally, according to the researchers, nanodiamonds could be applied using the same process for use in quantum devices and more.

Diamonds were produced in earlier investigations by compressing hydrogen and carbon molecules. However, PET, which is frequently used in wrapping for food and beverages, includes oxygen in addition to hydrogen and carbon, and as a result, it more closely resembles the makeup of Uranus and Neptune, both ice giant planets. According to Dominik Kraus of the University of Rostock, the presence of oxygen appears to aid in the production of diamonds.
“The oxygen sucks out the hydrogen,”

Traditionally, explosives have been used to make nanodiamonds, which is a difficult procedure to manage. With the new method, nanodiamonds might be able to be customised for specific applications, for example quantum devices manufactured from flawed diamonds (e.g. nitrogen atoms being present in place of carbon atoms).

Marius Millot, a third party physicist, said that “the idea is quite cool. You take water bottle plastic; you zap it with a laser to make diamond. How practical it is, I don’t know.”