But things are never as simple as they seem. Despite being so prevalent, the substance in question has only ever existed in synthetic form until recently, and the first naturally-occurring example of it didn't even come from beneath the ground; it arrived from outer space.

The inner layers of the Earth are strange and forbidding places where extreme pressures and temperatures do weird things to minerals, often rendering them in mixtures and properties only possible in the crucible of the planet, at great distances below the surface. For many years now, scientists have believed that a type of perovskite-structure material (a substance with a unique crystalline makeup) – in this case, a high-density form of magnesium iron silicate – has existed at these depths and has been a major, but unseen, influence on the flow of mineral elements and heat within the Earth's mantle.

However, the structural characteristics of the unseen substance have never truly been determined before because natural versions of it only remain stable at depths beneath the Earth's surface of some 660 kilometers (410 miles) and at pressures of above 230 kbar (23 GPa). Some scientists even believe that a number of inclusions found on diamonds are the telltale remnants of an encounter with the elusive subterranean substance on their long journey to the surface. Even so, when it is occasionally brought up from the deep Earth caught up in a conglomerate of other minerals, it quickly decomposes into far less dense minerals as heat and pressure decreases.