Pink Diamonds

Syllabus:GS3/ Science and Technology

News

• The researchers have found the “missing ingredient” for pink diamonds by measuring the age of elements of the crystals of an Argyle rock sample.

Background

• Pink diamonds are some of the world’s most expensive stones due their rarity and beauty.
• More than 90% of all the pink diamonds ever found were discovered at the Argyle mine in the remote northwest of Australia.However most other diamond mines are located  in the middle of a continent.

Ingredients for Forming Pink Diamonds

• For formation of the Pink diamond three ingredients are needed. Two of the three ingredients for forming pink diamonds had already been known.
  • The first ingredient is carbon, and it must be more than 150 km deep.
  • The second is the right amount of pressure, to give the color to the diamonds. 
  • The third and missing ingredient was the event that sent the diamonds shooting up to the surface.
• The immense pressure that twisted color into the diamonds occurred during collisions between western Australia and northern Australia 1.8 billion years ago. 

The Missing Ingredient

• According to the study published in the journal Nature Communications, the pink diamonds were brought to the earth’s surface by the break-up of the first supercontinent Nuna around 1.3 billion years ago.
• When Nuna started to break up it re-aggravated the “scar” from that event. Magma shot up through this old scar and took the diamonds along for the ride.

Significance

• Knowing the “missing ingredient” for pink diamonds could assist future efforts to find the rare stones.
• Also old mountain belts marking Nuna’s breakup near the edges of continents i.e. Canada, Russia, southern Africa and Australia have the potential to be home to a new “pink diamond paradise”.

Source: TH