Posted on 07/18/2018 8:34:10 AM PDT by ETL
A team of scientists made an enormous discovery when they recently uncovered a "quadrillion" tons of diamonds,buried more than 100 miles below Earth's surface, according to a new study
Researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Harvard, the Carnegie Institution of Washington and several other universities used seismic devices to measure the speed of sound waves traveling through the Earth's crust.
"Sound waves move at various speeds through the Earth, depending on the temperature, density, and composition of the rocks through which they travel," MIT explained in a news release.
"Scientists have used this relationship between seismic velocity and rock composition to estimate the types of rocks that make up the Earth’s crust and parts of the upper mantle, also known as the lithosphere."
The scientists noticed a sudden spike in seismic speeds toward the bottom of 200-mile cratons, or sections of rocks found "beneath the center of most continental tectonic plates."
In order to find out what was causing the sound waves to speed up, the researchers conducted several tests on various rocks and minerals.
"Only one type of rock produced the same velocities as what the seismologists measured: one that contains 1 to 2 percent diamond," the scientists explained in the study.
Therefore, scientists believe it's safe to conclude diamonds make up the bottom of cratons. ..."
“[Cratons] are like pieces of wood, floating on water,” Ulrich Faul, a research scientist in MIT’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences, said in an online statement.
“Cratons are a tiny bit less dense than their surroundings, so they don’t get subducted back into the Earth but stay floating on the surface. ..."
“This shows that diamond is not perhaps this exotic mineral, but on the [geological] scale of things, it’s relatively common.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
That was in the movie The Core....................
So, has elon musk stepped up on a method of fetching them yet?
Of course he has. Just needs a few trillion bucks in subsidy to realize it.
Only 100 miles!
Let’s have the government dig them up - no more debt or taxes! (Might dilute the value of a diamond a little!)
The deepest man has drilled is 7.5 miles so 100.0 miles makes them still rare.
You’ll piss off the Worm People living down there trying to dig ‘em up.
Maybe someone will give him a tax break like we did here in NV for his giga factory outside of Reno which he then sold to another concern for a profit. How does that work?
So far, the deepest bore hole into the earth made by humans is a little over 7½ miles in depth. Only 92½ more miles to go.
It's carbon, under extreme pressure. Of course it's common.
DeBeers is a scam.
Give that man a new shovel and get him diggin'.
There goes the market; that ten thousand dollar diamond just hit ten cents! IF we can mine them, that is!
Musk is working on the $100B loan with the bank to fund the effort. The bank is skeptical about using the diamonds he recovers as collateral. The financial manager at the bank is concerned that the value of the diamonds recovered might actually be diminished as a result of his recovering them. In this case, the revenue from sale of the diamonds might not cover the loan payoff amount.
Formation and growth
Diamonds in the mantle form through a metasomatic process where a C-O-H-N-S fluid or melt dissolves minerals in a rock and replaces them with new minerals. (The vague term C-O-H-N-S is commonly used because the exact composition is not known.) Diamonds form from this fluid either by reduction of oxidized carbon (e.g., CO2 or CO3) or oxidation of a reduced phase such as methane.[12]
Using probes such as polarized light, photoluminescence and cathodoluminescence, a series of growth zones can be identified in diamonds. The characteristic pattern in diamonds from the lithosphere involves a nearly concentric series of zones with very thin oscillations in luminescence and alternating episodes where the carbon is resorbed by the fluid and then grown again. Diamonds from below the lithosphere have a more irregular, almost polycrystalline texture, reflecting the higher temperatures and pressures as well as the transport of the diamonds by convection.[14]
Transport to the surface
Geological evidence supports a model in which kimberlite magma rose at 4–20 meters per second, creating an upward path by hydraulic fracturing of the rock. As the pressure decreases, a vapor phase exsolves from the magma, and this helps to keep the magma fluid. At the surface, the initial eruption explodes out through fissures at high speeds (over 200 meters per second). Then, at lower pressures, the rock is eroded, forming a pipe and producing fragmented rock (breccia). As the eruption wanes, there is pyroclastic phase and then metamorphism and hydration produces serpentinites.[14]
In space
(main article: Extraterrestrial diamonds)
Although diamonds on Earth are rare, they are very common in space. In meteorites, about 3 percent of the carbon is in the form of nanodiamonds, having diameters of a few nanometers. Sufficiently small diamonds can form in the cold of space because their lower surface energy makes them more stable than graphite.
The isotopic signatures of some nanodiamonds indicate they were formed outside the Solar System in stars.[24]
High pressure experiments predict that large quantities of diamonds condense from methane into a “diamond rain” on the ice giant planets Uranus and Neptune.[25][26][27] Some extrasolar planets may be almost entirely composed of diamond.[28]
Diamonds may exist in carbon-rich stars, particularly white dwarfs. One theory for the origin of carbonado, the toughest form of diamond, is that it originated in a white dwarf or supernova.[29][30] Diamonds formed in stars may have been the first minerals.[31]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diamond#Formation_and_growth
DeBeers is a scam.
True! Diamonds can be manufactured today. Not only has DeBeers convinced most world governments that only their diamonds can be legally traded (for the most part), but they have also convinced the world to pass laws requiring "manufactured diamonds" to be marked and devalued.
The reason "blood diamonds" exists is because DeBeers does not own the mines, essentially.
Da beers
Da Beers.
Da Bears
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