Diamonds need an electric zap to crystallize deep inside Earth – Livescience.com

Before diamonds can begin growing deep underground in Earth’s mantle, they need a little zap from an electric field, a new study finds.
In lab-based experiments, scientists mimicked conditions in the mantle the layer just beneath Earth’s crust and found that diamonds grew only when exposed to an electric field, even a weak one of about 1 volt, according to the study, which was published online Jan. 20 in the journal Science Advances
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“Our results clearly show that electric fields should be considered…

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