How is the most precious blue diamond on the earth formed? Or reveal the big secret inside the earth
The black spots saved in the rare blue diamonds in the picture contain important secrets about the interior of the Earth. In this latest study, scientists have carefully studied the 46 most expensive diamonds on Earth.
According to foreign media reports, if you want to know what the world's rarest and most precious diamonds are in the early stages of formation, you must trace the history back to billions of years ago, they may reveal the secrets inside the earth!
Since 1958, the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History has displayed a beautiful blue diamond with a weight of 45 grams. Its beauty is unparalleled and is known as the "drill of hope". Its formation, what is historical playback? Before entering the museum, this embarrassing blue diamond quickly changed hands, from merchants to celebrities, to thieves, to King Louis XIV, and finally, the French gem merchant sent it back to a mine in India. It has been preserved for hundreds of thousands of years under the hard lava of this mine.
You will see the rock remelted into a raging magma, sucked into an erupting volcano and pushed deep into the core, where the diamond slowly breaks down its constituent elements. After millions of years, like a second, you see some elements rise a few hundred kilometers from the depths of the earth back to the surface of the earth, and eventually it stays at the bottom of the ocean.
On August 1st this year, Nature published an exciting research paper on the story of the blue diamond. In an unprecedented study, geological researchers from the United States, Italy, and South Africa analyzed 46 of the world's most valuable diamonds to answer a simple question—how deep is the precious blue diamond on Earth Where is the place formed? How are they formed? In investigating these issues, the researchers found that the blue diamond is not only the rarest and deepest diamond on the planet, but also reveals some secrets in the depths of the earth, which means that the scientific exploration journey of the blue diamond has just begun!
The rarest rock in the world
Blue diamonds, also known as Type IIb diamonds, are very rare. According to the authors of the study, only one in ten diamonds of all mined diamonds meet this type and they are very precious.
Evan Smith, the first author of the study and the American Institute of Gemology, said in a statement that these so-called Type IIb diamonds are very valuable, making them difficult to use in scientific research.
One of the world's most famous and valuable gemstones, the Diamond of Hope is a blue type IIb diamond that is one of the rarest and deepest diamonds ever to be mined.
In the current study, Smith and colleagues spent two years to learn about the world's most expensive blue diamonds, including a blue diamond called "Cullinan's Dream", which weighs 24.18 grams, 2016 auction price More than $23 million.
Inclusions in diamonds reveal the mystery of formation
The team screened hundreds of thousands of diamonds and finally selected a group of gleaming test objects to select diamonds with distinct inclusions from ancient underground rock formations that formed diamonds. By carefully studying these inclusions, they were able to assess what type of minerals were present in the rock formation, and these inclusions could also indicate which areas of the earth are formed in the earth's crust.
Using a Raman spectrometer, a method of scattering a laser onto a target to determine its unique constituent molecules, the researchers were able to determine that the inclusions in the blue diamond looked like they were formed only in the lower mantle layer, about 410 below the surface of the Earth. At 660 kilometers, it is four times the depth of the previous expected. In contrast, the researchers pointed out that most gem-quality diamonds are excavated 150-200 km underground, making the blue diamond not only the rarest diamond, but also the deepest known diamond.
Recent studies have shown that the color of blue diamonds comes from the boron molecules in deep-sea minerals, which are elements that exist almost exclusively on the Earth's surface and underwater deposits. To reach the depths of the underground that are believed to be formed by blue diamonds, boron may travel along the earth's dense seafloor crust, when the submarine crust collides with the continental crust in the subduction zone, forcing denser plates to deposit beneath the lower density plates.
Steven Shirey, a researcher and researcher at the Carnegie Institution of Science in Washington, USA, said in a statement that we now know that the best quality gem-quality diamonds come from the deepest part of the earth.
For those of us who can never have a precious blue diamond, this is an intriguing hope. At the same time, the findings of this study show that our Earth will circulate surface minerals and turn the minerals in the deeper layers of the mantle layer to the surface of the Earth, far beyond the expectations of previous scientists.
The researchers pointed out that the color of the blue diamond comes from boron, which is an element that exists almost exclusively on the surface of the earth and the deposit of minerals in the water. To reach the depths of the underground that are believed to be formed by blue diamonds, boron may travel along the earth's dense seafloor crust, when the submarine crust collides with the continental crust in the subduction zone, forcing denser plates to deposit beneath the lower density plates.
Because some inclusions in the blue diamond are also covered by hydrogen and methane, it is likely that any underwater minerals carry boron into the mantle and carry a small amount of seawater. The researchers pointed out that this possibility highlights that the Earth's ultra-deep water cycle may be a major way to form blue diamonds.
To further refine this hypothesis, researchers need to study more of the world's brightest and bluest diamonds, so don't say that science has no charm, and often behind the beauty can reveal little-known scientific secrets.
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