An astonishing new study has found a way to turn carbon dioxide in a huge new natural resource — and it could also keep Global Warming at bay.

CO2 is the most abundant anthropogenic greenhouse gas, as a recent Phys.org report states, and any way to change it into a valuable commodity would be the holy grail for scientists and governments trying to figure out how to tackle the problem.

A team of chemists has said that they’ve figured out just such a way, developing a method to convert atmospheric CO2 into carbon nanofibers that could be used in industrial and consumer products. Their findings will be presented at the National Meeting and Exposition of the American Chemical Society.

This method of finding “diamonds in the sky” would allow industrial manufacturers to produce high-yield carbon nanofibers that could make strong carbon composites, like those used on the Boeing Dreamliner aircraft, as well as sports equipment, turbine blades, and countless other products, said Stuart Licht, who led the team at George Washington University, according to the report.

It’s not the first time these researchers have tackled a tough subject related to Global Warming, also developing a fertilizer and a cement that doesn’t emit CO2. Now, they’re trying to figure out how to grab CO2 that’s already out there and turn it into something useful rather than something that’s destroying our environment.

Licht coined the phrase, “diamonds from the sky,” noting that carbon is what diamonds are made out of while also alluding to the huge economic value of carbon nanofibers in today’s economy. The carbon nanofibers would be made out of atmospheric carbon and oxygen.

The process also turned out to be quite efficient and required a low amount of energy — just a few volts of electricity — as well as sunlight and lots of CO2. Electrolytic syntheses is used to make the nanofibers, where CO2 is broken down in a bath of molten carbonates at a temperature of 1,380 degrees F. Atmospheric air is then pumped in, causing the CO2 to dissolve under the intense heat, sending current into the electrodes and causing carbon nanofibers to build up.

They used a solar energy system to generate the heat and electricity, focusing the rays of the sun on a solar cell and then using a second system to create heat and thermal energy, raising the electrolytic cell’s temperature.

It would cost an estimated $1,000 per ton of carbon nanofiber to pay for the electrical energy, which would be hundreds of times less than the product’s value. With an area just 10 percent of the size of the Sahara Desert, Licht said according to the report, the system could remove enough CO2 to drop atmospheric levels to pre-industrial revolution levels in just 10 years, an astonishing claim.

Still, the system is merely experimental. The question is whether the process can make consistently sized nanofibers.