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Below the frosty (băng giá, giá rét) hydrogen-helium atmospheres of Neptune and Uranus lie fluid mantles rich in water, ammonia, methane, and possibly something far more dazzling: diamonds. Scientists have long suspected these dense gems might rain out of the ice giants’ mantles and into their rocky cores.

However, Uranus’ interior might not be as glitzy as previously thought. Theoretical results published February 27th in Nature Communications suggest that while ideal diamond-forming conditions could occur within Neptune’s mantle, they might not exist on Uranus. But the ice giants’ interiors are still so mysterious that confidently forecasting diamond drizzles on either world will have to wait for future missions to the outer solar system, other researchers say.

“Planets with the mass of Uranus and Neptune seem to be quite common in the in the galaxy,” says Ravit Helled (University of Zurich), who wasn’t involved in the study. Understanding what goes on inside the ice giants, she adds, is “very important for the characterization of exoplanets, as well as our understanding of our own origin (nguồn gốc).”

DIAMONDS IN THE SKY?

After the Voyager 2 flybys in the 1980s, scientists noticed that Neptune glows with its own internal heat, while Uranus only throws back the energy it receives from the Sun. They’ve been struggling to explain the difference ever since.

“The name of the game for these planets for the past [decades] has been trying to think about why are they actually different, because they look so similar,”

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