Science & Technology

A quadrillion tons of diamond discovered

By T.K. Randall
July 17, 2018 ·  7 comments

The Earth is filled with diamonds. Image Credit: CC BY-SA 2.0 Swamibu The remarkable diamond cache was discovered thanks to seismic scans of the Earth's interior - a process that involves using sound waves to build up a picture of what lies beneath the ground.

When researchers at MIT's Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences found an anomaly in the data, they determined that large amounts of diamond situated 150km under the planet's surface was the most likely explanation.

"This shows that diamond is not perhaps this exotic mineral, but on the scale of things, it's relatively common," said MIT research scientist Ulrich Faul."We can't get at them, but still, there is much more diamond there than we have ever thought before."

Even if we do find a way to delve this far down in to the Earth however, mining the diamonds may ultimately prove fruitless given that their sheer quantity will undoubtedly devalue them immensely.

It is also likely that asteroid mining - which also has the potential to yield large quantities of diamond and other precious resources - will have significantly devalued them long before that.

Source: News.com.au | Comments (7)

Tags: Diamonds