Mercury has been the landing zone of meteorites for billions of years. While those impacts might have ruined the surface of the planet, there is also a possibility they might have blessed Mercury <a href="https://www.sciencenews.org/article/mercury-diamond-surface-crust-meteorite-impact-graphite">with precious gemstones as well</a>. According to planetary scientist Kevin Cannon, the impacts created high pressures and temperatures that can transform carbon into diamonds. “What we think happened is that when [Mercury] first formed, it had a magma ocean and that graphite crystallized out of that magma,” Cannon explained.&nbsp;The scientist simulated 4.5 billion years of impacts on a graphite crust to find out how diamonds could be formed on the Mercurian surface. The findings show that if the planet had a skin of graphite around 300 meters thick, the impacts would have generated 16 quadrillion tons of diamonds. Wow. An opportunity to confirm Cannon’s hypothesis on the formation of gemstones could be done in 2025 when the BepiColombo mission reaches the planet.image credit: wikimedia commons&nbsp;#Mercury #diamonds #planetaryscience #space