Curtin University researchers studying diamond-rich rocks from Western Australia’s Argyle volcano have identified the missing third key ingredient needed to bring valuable pink diamonds to the Earth’s surface where they can be mined, which could greatly help in the global hunt for new deposits.
Curtin University researchers studying diamond-rich rocks from Western Australia’s Argyle volcano have identified the missing third key ingredient needed to bring valuable pink diamonds to the Earth’s surface where they can be mined, which could greatly help in the global hunt for new deposits.
While it is known that for diamonds to form there needs to be carbon deep in the Earth, and for these diamonds to turn pink they must be subjected to forces from colliding tectonic plates, the new study has found the third ingredient needed for the presence of pink diamonds at surface level, which is continents that were ‘stretched’ during continental break-up hundreds of millions of years ago.
Lead researcher Dr Hugo Olierook, from Curtin’s John de Laeter Centre, said the ‘stretching’ of landmasses created gaps in the Earth’s crust through which diamond-carrying magma could rise to the surface.
“By using laser beams smaller than the width of a human hair on rocks supplied by Rio Tinto, we found Argyle to be 1.3 billion years old, which is 100 million years older than previously thought, meaning it would likely have formed as a result of an ancient supercontinent breaking apart,” Dr Olierook said.
Read more at Curtin University
Photo Credit: JamesDeMers via Pixabay
