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There is a bunch of bling buried in the Earth.
More than a quadrillion tons of diamonds to be exact, a thousand times more than a trillion, reported US researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology this week. ] But do not expect a diamond rush. These precious natural minerals are located much further than any drilling expedition has ever reached, at about 145 to 240 kilometers below the surface of our planet. says Ulrich Faul, a researcher at the Department of Earth Sciences, Atmosphere and Planets at MIT.
"This shows that the diamond may not be this exotic mineral, but"
Using seismic technology to analyze how sound waves cross the Earth, scientists have detected the treasures of rocks called cratonic roots, which have the shape of inverted mountains extending across the earth's crust and into the mantle
These are "the oldest and most immobile rock sections that lie under the center of most continental tectonic plates, "MIT said in a statement
. The deep diamonds of Earth began because scientists were intrigued by the observations that sound waves would accelerate considerably through the roots of ancient cratons.
So they assembled virtual rocks made of various combinations of minerals to calculate the speed of sound waves. "The diamond in many ways is special," says Faul. "One of its special properties is that the speed of sound in diamond is more than twice as fast as in the dominant mineral in the rocks of the upper mantle."
They discovered that the only type of rock that corresponded to the velocities that they detected in the craton would contain one to two percent of diamonds
Scientists now believe that the ancient underground rocks of the Earth contain at least 1000 times more diamonds
Yet, very few of these gems should go to the jewelry store.
Diamonds are made from carbon and are formed under high pressure Extreme temperatures deep in the Earth
They emerge near the surface only through volcanic eruptions which occur rarely, in the order of a few tens of millions of years
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