A mystery diamond from outer space has been found by researchers

The diamond's unusual formation could have important technological uses. (Image credit: Australia's RMIT University)

A mysterious diamond from an ancient dwarf planet found its way to Earth surface's, researchers from the Australia and the United Kingdom have confirmed in a recent study.

It all began when Andy Tomkins, geologist and professor at Australia's Monash University, was doing fieldwork categorising meteors, CNN reported. In a space rock in Africa's north west, he detected a peculiar "bended" diamond.

Upon further study, what was found in the meteorite was a rare hexagonal stone called lonsdaleite.

Researchers proposed that lonsdaleite formed "from a supercritical fluid at high temperature and moderate pressures".

“Later, lonsdaleite was partially replaced by diamond as the environment cooled and the pressure decreased,” Tomkins was quoted as saying in an article published by RMIT University, one of the partners in the research.

Researchers expect the diamond to have formed after a collision between the dwarf planet and a large asteroid about 4.5 billion years ago.

“There’s strong evidence that there’s a newly discovered formation process for the lonsdaleite and regular diamond, which is like a supercritical chemical vapour deposition process that has taken place in these space rocks, probably in the dwarf planet shortly after a catastrophic collision,” RMIT professor Dougal McCulloch said.

Lonsdaleite has been found to be potentially harder than regular diamonds, which have a cubic structure. Its unusual formation could have important technological uses, researchers said.

“Nature has provided us with a process to try and replicate in industry," Professor Tomkins 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.”