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Diamonds Are Forever Revealing New Insights into Earth's Development
June 13, 2008Diamonds will take center stage this month in countless wedding ceremonies and other celebrations. In addition to their usual role as symbols of enduring love and fidelity, diamonds are now also helping geologists unravel clues about how the earth's precious metal mineralization was formed and why diamonds and some of these metals are found in only a few places around the world.
In a research paper published in this week's journal Nature, researchers from the Carnegie Institution and the University of Cape Town presented their findings after studying 2 billion year-old diamonds mined near the famed Bushveld Complex, a unique and mysterious geological formation in central South Africa. After analyzing mineral inclusions within the diamonds, the researchers believe both the diamonds and the magmas that gave rise to the Bushveld Complex have an ancient subcontinental mantle source.
Platinum and diamonds are generally associated as partners in expensive jewelry, but diamonds in the ground sometimes trap traces of platinum group elements (PGEs) such as platinum, palladium, rhodium, ruthenium, osmium and iridium when they are formed. When these elements are encapsulated as mineral inclusions in diamonds, their unique isotopic 'signatures' help geologists determine where the diamonds were formed and how old they are.
Stephen H. Richardson of the University of Cape Town and Steven B. Shirey of the Carnegie Institution studied PGE inclusions in about 20 diamonds collected near the Bushveld Complex. The complex is vast, measuring hundreds of kilometers in length, and it is one of the few places in the world where PGEs are found in large enough quantities to be mined.
The Bushveld Complex is also very old--geologists put its age at just over 2 billion years--and formed by crystallization of the Bushveld magmas in a massive crustal magma chamber.
The researchers looked at the PGEs in the diamonds, sometimes analyzing grains as small as a few micrograms. They found that the isotopic signatures of the PGEs in the diamonds and Bushveld ore minerals match, showing the main source of Bushveld platinum to be mantle, not crust falling into the magma chamber as previously thought.
"This helps explain the richness of these deposits," Richardson explained. "The old subcontinental mantle has a higher PGE content than the crust and there is more of it for Bushveld magmas to traverse and pick up the PGEs found in the ores."
Beyond providing new insights into an ancient geological enigma, this research may have important implications for the mining industry. PGEs are extremely rare--platinum is the most abundant of the bunch, and it is 30 times rarer than gold--and extremely useful. These elements are important components in many computers and other electronic devices, and they are used in the catalytic converters that clean pollution from car exhaust.
Understanding how these elements are concentrated closer to the earth's surface may make it easier to find and mine them.
The National Science Foundation (NSF)
Stephen H. Richardson of the University of Cape Town and Steven B. Shirey of the Carnegie Institution studied PGE inclusions in about 20 diamonds collected near the Bushveld Complex. The complex is vast, measuring hundreds of kilometers in length, and it is one of the few places in the world where PGEs are found in large enough quantities to be mined.
The Bushveld Complex is also very old--geologists put its age at just over 2 billion years--and formed by crystallization of the Bushveld magmas in a massive crustal magma chamber.
The researchers looked at the PGEs in the diamonds, sometimes analyzing grains as small as a few micrograms. They found that the isotopic signatures of the PGEs in the diamonds and Bushveld ore minerals match, showing the main source of Bushveld platinum to be mantle, not crust falling into the magma chamber as previously thought.
"This helps explain the richness of these deposits," Richardson explained. "The old subcontinental mantle has a higher PGE content than the crust and there is more of it for Bushveld magmas to traverse and pick up the PGEs found in the ores."
Beyond providing new insights into an ancient geological enigma, this research may have important implications for the mining industry. PGEs are extremely rare--platinum is the most abundant of the bunch, and it is 30 times rarer than gold--and extremely useful. These elements are important components in many computers and other electronic devices, and they are used in the catalytic converters that clean pollution from car exhaust.
Understanding how these elements are concentrated closer to the earth's surface may make it easier to find and mine them.
The National Science Foundation (NSF)
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Diamond conference at the Goethe University
From the 10 to 15 August, the casino on the Westend Campus will become the worldwide centre for diamond researchers from industry and academia. During this time, the mineralogists from the GeoZentrum of the Goethe University will host the 9th International Kimberlite Conference, which is the most important meeting related to this unique gemstone.
Baseball diamonds: the lefthander's best friend
Baseball diamonds are a left-hander's best friend. That's because the game was designed to make a lefty the "Natural," according to David A. Peters, Ph.D., the McDonnell Douglas Professor of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis and über baseball fan. Peters is a mechanical engineer who specializes in aircraft and helicopter engineering and has a different approach to viewing America's Favorite Pastime.
Geologists push back date basins formed, supporting frozen Earth theory
Even in geology, it's not often a date gets revised by 500 million years. But University of Florida geologists say they have found strong evidence that a half-dozen major basins in India were formed a billion or more years ago, making them at least 500 million years older than commonly thought.
University of Pennsylvania Engineers Reveal What Makes Diamonds Slippery at the Nanoscale
They call diamonds "ice," and not just because they sparkle. Engineers and physicists have long studied diamond because even though the material is as hard as an ice ball to the head, diamond slips and slides with remarkably low friction, making it an ideal material or coating for seals, high performance tools and high-tech moving parts.
The photonic beetle
Researchers have been unable to build an ideal "photonic crystal" to manipulate visible light, impeding the dream of ultrafast optical computers.
New nanotech products hitting the market at the rate of 3-4 per week
New nanotechnology consumer products are coming on the market at the rate of 3-4 per week, a finding based on the latest update to the nanotechnology consumer product inventory maintained by the Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies (PEN).
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