Yes, diamonds really are forever, as “scientists estimate there are ‘trillions of carats’ lying beneath a 35million-year-old asteroid crater in Siberia – more than ten times the global stockpile.” That wasn’t the only discovery, they also noticed that the diamonds at Popigai Astroblem in Siberia were ‘twice as hard’ as normal, “making them ideal for high-precision scientific instruments and industry.” Continue reading for the news report and more information.
‘The resources of super-hard diamonds contained in rocks of the Popigai crypto-explosion structure are by a factor of ten bigger than the world’s all known reserves,’ he said. ‘We are speaking about trillions of carats. By comparison, present-day known reserves in Yakutia (a Russian mine) are estimated at one billion carats.’
The stones at Popigai are known as ‘impact diamonds’ which result when an object like a meteor strikes an existing diamond deposit. They are also unique, which will make them even more sought-after in high-precision scientific and industrial markets.
Since diamonds like this don’t exist in bulk anywhere else in the world, Russia is understandably somewhat excited on having a monopoly on enough impact diamonds to supply the rest of the world for (they estimate) the next 3,000 years or so. According to a Russian news agency, “use of these minerals in the manufacturing industry is capable of a technical revolution,” but we’ll have to wait and see what happens when these diamonds start getting pulled out of the ground by the fistful.
