Comets were made under heat and pressure. So are diamonds. See what I'm going at?
2007-07-02 04:24:03 · 15 answers · asked by Anonymous in Science & Mathematics ➔ Astronomy & Space
My bad....I meant asteroids
2007-07-02 05:57:23 · update #1
Your premise that comets were made with heat and pressure is "flawed".
Comets are formed by the accretion of rock, dust and ice in an intensely cold outer region of the solar system called the Oort cloud.
Nothing I have studied says they are made under great heat and pressure. That's not to say that this is impossible, only that there is a great lack of information to support it.
Asteroids, on the other hand.........might, but its still not likely. Most are small accreted solid masses generally lacking the "geologic" forces necessary to compress and heat carbon into diamond.
That doesn't mean we give up on the idea. After all, we don't know where it's been.
2007-07-02 04:41:14 · answer #1 · answered by Anonymous · 1⤊ 0⤋
Comets are loose conglomerates of dust and ice. The latest results from examining pieces of a comet that were brought back to Earth indicate that some heat was involved, but that's a long way from saying that enough heat and pressure to create things like diamonds was involved.
2007-07-02 11:32:57 · answer #2 · answered by Jason T 7 · 1⤊ 0⤋
There are a couple things wrong with that notion. First of all, comets are not made with heat and pressure. They are basically dirty balls of ice flying around the solar system. Their tails are made by bits of ice and dust being pushed off the comet itself by solar winds. So there is actually little heat or pressure involved in the formation of comets.
Secondly, diamons are made of pure carbon, as someone has already said. Comets contain an entire slew of elements, including hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen, so they are nowhere near pure enough to yield diamonds.
2007-07-02 11:32:49 · answer #3 · answered by knivetsil 2 · 1⤊ 0⤋
If comets are formed from heat and pressure then diamond-like, maybe, except diamonds are pure carbon, where coments contains a variety of materials. I'm sure many things can be diamond-like if you base it off of being made from pressure and heat.
Comets are made in the freezing of space though, so I don't see this analogy working.
2007-07-02 11:28:59 · answer #4 · answered by therealchuckbales 5 · 4⤊ 0⤋
Yes, but marble (metamorphic rock) is also made from heat and pressure. Just because things are formed by the same processes doesn't make them similar. Comets and diamonds are made from different chemicals.
2007-07-02 11:33:47 · answer #5 · answered by CNJRTOM 5 · 1⤊ 0⤋
It requires a huge amount of pressure and heat far beyond that which the relatively small masses of comets can generate. It's also thought that most comets are very loosely held together, kind of more like fluff than densely-packed objects.
2007-07-02 11:29:25 · answer #6 · answered by Chug-a-Lug 7 · 2⤊ 0⤋
AS has been said, comets are not formed under leat and pressure.
But there is a star, called the diamond star, that is composed mostly of hot, pressurized carbon. This leads astronomers to suggest that the center of this star is a diamond 4000 KM across. you can read about it here:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3492919.stm
2007-07-02 11:35:45 · answer #7 · answered by David S 3 · 1⤊ 0⤋
Comets are mostly ice covered rocks or balls of ice they were formed in many different ways but heat and pressure were not always involved.
2007-07-02 11:35:26 · answer #8 · answered by ANON 3 · 1⤊ 0⤋
Comets are not made with heat and pressure. Just the opposite. They are made with almost no pressure and so cold that water and even gasses are frozen in them.
2007-07-02 11:33:05 · answer #9 · answered by campbelp2002 7 · 1⤊ 0⤋
Comets weren't made with heat and pressure. They were formed in the outermost reaches of the solar nebula where the gas was cold and rare.
2007-07-02 11:28:43 · answer #10 · answered by ZikZak 6 · 2⤊ 0⤋