Gazing Into a Diamond s Flaws Has Revealed Hidden Clues About How Our Planet Formed
15 MAY 2021
More than mere beautiful, coveted stones, diamonds hold another sort of wealth: fragments of Earth s deep history.
From flaws within the mineral s near-perfect lattice, scientists have just worked out how to extract long-hidden records of our planet s past.
We like the ones that no one else really wants, said geochemist Yaakov Weiss from Columbia University, referring to the diamonds full of impurities that don t look as clear and shiny as those desired for jewelry.
These fibrous, dirty-looking gems are where tiny vaults of information lie, stuffed with messages from Earth s inner depths. The carbon structure of a perfect diamond doesn t contain enough radioisotopes to help researchers date it, but the microinclusions found in its flaws can.