JAKARTA: More than a quadrillion tons of diamonds may be hidden in theEarth’s interior, as per a new study by the MIT and other universities.However, don’t hope for a diamond rush. Why? Because these diamonds arelikely to be buried more than 100 miles below the surface, far deeper thanany drilling expedition has ever reached.
Given that a ton of diamonds is 50,000,000 carats, each carat is worth3,000 pounds at least, which comes out a hefty150,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 pounds by relatively unscientificcalculations, as per a report in the netralnews.
Shaped like inverted mountains, cratons can stretch as deep as 200 milesthrough the Earth’s crust and into its mantle, geologists refer to theirdeepest sections as “roots.”
Scientists have estimated that the cratonic roots may contain 1 to 2 percent diamond. Considering the volume of cratonic roots, it is estimatedthat about a quadrillion (1016) tons of diamond are scattered within theseancient rocks.
Scientists came to the conclusion after puzzling over an anomaly in seismicdata, as per an MIT release. For the past few decades, agencies such as theUnited States Geological Survey have kept global records of seismicactivity — essentially, sound waves traveling through the Earth that aretriggered by earthquakes, tsunamis, explosions, and other ground-shakingsources. Seismic receivers around the world pick up sound waves from suchsources, at various speeds and intensities, which seismologists can use todetermine where, for example, an earthquake originated.
However, in using seismic data to map the Earth’s interior, scientists havebeen unable to explain a curious anomaly: Sound waves tend to speed upsignificantly when passing through the roots of ancient cratons. Cratonsare known to be colder and less dense than the surrounding mantle, whichwould in turn yield slightly faster sound waves, but not quite as fast aswhat has been measured.