scientist have see how a rarefied form of ball field is created in space . Found in four meteorite in north - west Africa , the strange hexangular adamant do not naturally occur on Earth . Now , we may love where they come from .

billion of eld ago , there was a dwarf planet in the intimate Solar System that had carbon in its mantle . After a catastrophic collision with a large asteroid , that carbon was compressed into lonsdaleite , where carbon atom are organized in a hexagonal wicket rather of the three-dimensional complex body part of regulardiamonds .

These lonsdaleite quartz glass got trapped inside ureilite meteorites , a rare manikin of stony space rock and roll that are plentiful in carbon , unremarkably graphite and nanodiamond . In a new theme in theProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences , the researchers establish a connection between all these dissimilar carbon - establish minerals that evoke the rhombus mould from the mantle of a long - bushed dwarf planet .

They submit the graphite release into baseball diamond and lonsdaleite . Graphite is made of layer of carbon organized in a hexangular grid . The squad believes that the impact created a supercritical fluid made of carbon , hydrogen , atomic number 8 , and sulfur . This interact with black lead at high temperatures and moderate insistence which allowed the carbon to retain the hexangular distribution of black lead , but in a 3D space , rather than in 2D layers .

" after , lonsdaleite was partially replaced by ball field as the environment cool and the insistency lessen , " explained lead author Professor Andy Tomkins from Monash University in astatement .

The team used innovative electron microscopy proficiency to take the meteorite slice by slice , permit them to make a series of snap telling the story of how lonsdaleite formed and how it was partially replaced by diamonds and graphite .

" We have also bring out the largest lonsdaleite crystal known to date that are up to a micrometer in size — much , much thinner than a human pilus , " note fourth-year author Professor Dougal McCulloch from RMIT University .

Lonsdaleite is think to be much harder than diamonds due to its bodily structure but it has been hard to test this until now as naturally occurring exercise are very belittled . However , as McCulloch said , the four African meteorites featured crystals up to a micrometer , 1,000 bigger than any regain before .

" Nature has thus cater us with a process to render and replicate in manufacture . We think that lonsdaleite could be used to make tiny , radical - concentrated machine parting if we can develop an industrial process that promotes transposition of pre - shaped black lead part by lonsdaleite , " Tomkins explained .

Lonsdaleite was describe in honor of British pioneering crystallographer Kathleen Lonsdale . Together with the biochemist Marjory Stephenson , they were the first two cleaning lady elect as a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1945 .