Posted on 12/17/2014 8:01:13 PM PST by BenLurkin
"The exciting thing for me is there are 30,000 itty-bitty, perfect octahedrons, and not one big diamond," said Larry Taylor, a geologist at the University of Tennessee, who presented the findings at the American Geophysical Union's annual meeting. "It's like they formed instantaneously. This rock is a strange one indeed."
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
Nice theory - that would be pretty much instantaneous!
Yes, but such has been found in an outer ring of an impact crater in Canada. They would have once been a possible source of tiny industrial diamonds but with the manufactured diamonds available today they’re not economically mined.
How would the diamonds be separated? Are they all just fused together by rock? If that’s the case, then maybe solvents could dissolve the rock. I don’t know if heat would work because diamonds, I believe, can actually burn, being carbon. Would depend on the required temps I guess. It would be fascinating if you could just heat up the entire encrustation and strain out the liquid rock, leaving the diamonds behind.
Diamonds are the hardest mineral. The diamonds in this case are tiny. You would crush the rock and likely screen out the diamonds. There are many reagents that might react with the encasing rock as well. Separation wouldn’t be much of a problem. Diamonds also can take a lot of heat and pressure, that’s why the most commonly form in the mantel (carbon that hasn’t been subjected to great heat and pressure is graphite - the lubricant and the stuff in your pencil). It’s all in the crystal structure.
Interesting, thanks. I find process engineering fascinating.
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