A “folded diamond” doesn’t sound entirely plausible. But that’s exactly what we’ve found inside a rare group of meteorites known as ureilites, which likely came from the mantle of a dwarf planet or very large asteroid that was destroyed 4.56 billion years ago in a giant collision.
Within these space rocks, we found layered diamonds with distinctive fold patterns. Our discovery is published today in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
