Twenty years ago, deep underground in the Kalahari Desert in Botswana, thomas garnon Before I knew it, I was walking through a hellish place. The sound of explosions echoed off the walls and the temperature rose. “It was like a baptism of fire,” he says. It was his first trip to Kimberlite and his diamond mines.
The scene was full of cameras, and Garnon, now a student at the University of Southampton in the UK, was warned that if any jewelery was found on her, accidentally or not, she would be in trouble. But he didn't come here to find his fortune. He was seeking answers to one of Earth's greatest mysteries.
Diamonds are precious to many, but they hold a special place in the hearts of geologists. They were forged long ago in the fiery depths of Earth's inaccessible mantle and rose to the surface riding supersonic jets of magma from strange volcanoes called kimberlites.
Although we don't know exactly how diamonds are formed, we do know that diamonds are like time capsules that reveal secrets of Earth's distant past. And perhaps the biggest question is why the kimberlites that pushed them to the surface appear to have gone extinct millions of years ago.
Now, nearly 20 years after that first visit to the diamond mine, Gernon and his fellow kimberlite detectives finally have a comprehensive model of how volcanoes work, and with it You may gain a deeper understanding of volcanic treasures. Additionally, the study revealed the intriguing prospect that kimberlites may not be extinct after all.
Diamonds are the opposite…
Source: www.newscientist.com
