They detect billions of diamonds

Researchers at the Mbadachusetts Institute of Technology made this discovery. The problem is that they are between 145 and 240 kilometers below the surface of our planet.

There is a huge treasure hidden under our feet: more than a billion tons of diamonds, revealed this week by US researchers from the Mbadachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

But do not expect an avalanche of diamonds. These precious minerals are located deeper than any other drilling ever made, between 145 and 240 kilometers below the surface of our planet. "We can not reach them, but even so, there are many more diamonds than we have thought up to now," said Ulrich Faul, a researcher at the Department of Earth Sciences, at the University of California. MIT atmosphere and planets.

"This shows that the diamond is not an exotic mineral, but, given the quantity, is relatively common," he added.

Using Technology seismic to badyze how the sound waves cross the Earth, the treasure in the rocks called cratonic roots, whose shape is similar to that of the inverted mountains located between the crust and the Earth's mantle.

These are "the oldest sectors and motionless rocks that are below the central part of many The Deep Earth Diamond Discovery Project was launched because scientists were confused when the sound waves significantly accelerated ive crossing the old cratonic roots.

Thus, they badembled virtual rocks with various combinations of minerals, to calculate the speed at which the sound waves could cross them.

"Diamonds are special in many ways," said Faul. "One of its particular properties is that the speed of sound through the diamond is more than twice as fast as in olivine, the dominant mineral in the rocks of the upper mantle," he explains

. of rocks that coincided with the speed detected was a type of rock that comprised in its composition one to two percent of diamond.

Scientists now believe that the rocks of the ancient subsoil of the Earth contain at least a thousand times more diamond However, very few of these gems will reach the jewels.

Diamonds are composed of coal and formed under high pressure and extreme temperatures in the depth of the Earth. They emerge only near the surface by volcanic eruptions that occur infrequently, every ten million years.