These gems survived the end of the world. They remember Earth as we can only dream of
Diamonds are valuable gems and extremely hard minerals. It turns out that their longevity can also be priceless. Some of the diamonds mined today have witnessed the formation of earth's continents.
Oct 22, 2023 | updated: 4:58 AM EDT, October 23, 2023
Diamonds are long-lived and very resistant. Their crushing requires immense force, and melting into graphite has a chance to occur at a temperature of 1652 degrees Fahrenheit. Such capabilities make them able to survive virtually everything that planet Earth can throw at them.
Diamonds on planet Earth
Some estimates suggest that diamonds currently mined could have formed even 3.5 billion years ago. Most of them are much younger, but particularly notable might be stones that were formed 450 to 450 million years ago.
We're talking about extremely rare sublithospheric diamonds. They can be found in various distant parts of the world, and it happens that they are mined from different depths. According to the geological studies published by Nature, this is not a coincidence, but a significant clue about Earth's past.
The processes responsible for the natural formation of diamonds remain unclear, but the conditions that favor them exist in the earth's upper mantle. Sublithospheric diamonds formed deeper, but also at a time when the earth's continents did not resemble the present ones.
The diamonds survived the breakup of the supercontinent
Concentrated around the South Pole, they formed a supercontinent called Gondwana. It began to break up about 120 million years ago, and diamonds trapped at a depth of 186 - 435 miles were participants in this process. Carried along with the Earth's mantle material, they changed their geolocation, and in some places, they were brought upward.
This was facilitated by the phenomenon of vulcanism, which similarly affected contemporary Brazil and West Africa. Analyses of diamonds mined in these regions confirm their common past. Cemented to the base of the supercontinent, they survived the process of its division.
This means that diamond mining can be valuable not only in a material sense. Beyond aesthetic value and unfailing hardness, these stones contain priceless information about the Earth's past. The oldest among them may be the last available witnesses to processes that led to the formation of continents and oceans.
