MIT Researchers: ‘Quadrillion Tons Of Diamond’ May Be Hiding Under Earth’s Surface

  • by Amanda Heroux
  • in Science
  • — Juil 19, 2018
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There's a load of bling buried in the Earth.

They found our planet is likely to be composed of as much as 2% of diamonds by volume.

But don't expect a diamond rush.

An interdisciplinary team of researchers have found a big treasure trove of diamonds buried below Earth's surface, way more than ever thought possible, but getting to them would take technology far beyond what we now have at our disposal.

"We can't get at them, but still, there is much more diamond there than we have ever thought before", Dr Ulrich Faul, a researcher in MIT's Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences and a co-author of the study, said in a statement.

MIT scientists reportedly made the discovery while examining sound waves traveling through the planet during seismic events.

So using 3D modeling to create virtual rocks, scientists set out to figure out what substances could compose the roots of cratons, allowing sound to pass through that that speed.


The project to uncover deep Earth diamonds began because scientists were puzzled by observations that sound waves would speed up significantly when passing through the roots of ancient cratons.

Although the MIT team estimates a quadrillion tons (or 1,000,000,000,000,000) worth of diamonds is in the cratonic roots, it makes up only about one to two percent of the rock's composition.

Scientists estimate the diamonds are more than 100 miles below the surface, beneath the continental tectonic plates.

"One of its special properties is, the sound velocity in diamond is more than twice as fast as in the dominant mineral in upper mantle rocks, olivine".

The findings would mean diamonds are about 1,000 times more common that previously thought.

They emerge near the surface only through volcanic eruptions that occur rarely - on the order of every few tens of millions of years.

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