Quadrillion Tons of Diamonds to Be Found in the Earth’s Surface
It turns out that the diamonds are not as rare as you’d believe. Scientists used sound waves to show that there’s a cache of diamonds in the surface of Earth. The amount is huge and it gets up to over one quadrillion tons of diamonds. We were skeptical too.
The study was made by a team of people from Harvard, MIT and the University of California at Berkeley and it shows that diamonds are not really those rare, exotic minerals, but that they’re actually quite common.
The thing is that we can’t actually get to them, but they’re there, and they’re a lot, more than we could ever imagine. The minerals are placed in the underground rock formation, which is called cratons and have a form of inverted mountains. They’re exactly at the center of the tectonic plates of the planet. The amazing thing is that they can widen 200 miles in the Earth, as said by the researchers from MIT. They also lead different researches now to see if the cratons, which are also known as roots, are composed of 1 to 2% of diamonds.
They use seismic data to find diamonds
We all know how sound waves that travel through the Earth help in recording the earthquakes. But did you know that they also use it to show from what are made the deepest parts of the planet? Using this, they make a picture of what the planet looks like inside.
The sound wave goes at different speeds and it depends on the composition, density of rocks and the temperature of the minerals that they go through. This way, researchers find a method to find out which rocks can be found in the surface of Earth – they compare the velocities of the sound waves.
Brad is a former Senior Fellow at the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism at Brandeis University, is an award-winning travel, culture, and parenting writer. His writing has appeared in many of the Canada’s most respected and credible publications, including the Toronto Star, CBC News and on the cover of Smithsonian Magazine. A meticulous researcher who’s not afraid to be controversial, he is nationally known as a journalist who opens people’s eyes to the realities behind accepted practices in the care of children. Brad is a contributing journalist to
Leave ’em there!