Turning one of the world's finest gems—diamonds—into one of the worst greenhouse gasses—methane—does not seem a great idea. Yet this happened through the work of a group of researchers from the Universities of Bologna and Edimburgh (UK), the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (France) and HPSTAR (China). This outcome published in Nature Communications was not a clumsy lab mistake. In fact, this study might provide more insight on the deep carbon cycle and the formation of hydrocarbons through abiotic processes (i.e. unrelated to biological activities) in the deep Earth.