In a new study published July 9 in Nature Communications, researchers from the University of California, Davis, and George Washington University use computer simulations to study how molten carbon crystallizes into either graphite or diamond at temperatures and pressures similar to Earth’s interior. The team’s findings challenge conventional understanding of diamond formation and reveal why experimental results studying carbon's phase behavior have been so inconsistent.

An international team of geoscientists led by a volcanologist at Rutgers University-New Brunswick and including Maxwell Rudolph, associate professor in the UC Davis Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, has discovered that, contrary to present scientific understanding, ancient volcanoes continued to spew carbon dioxide into the atmosphere from deep within the Earth long past their period of eruptions.