Diamonds In Australia Mines:Everyone is surprised by the discovery of big diamonds in the mines of Australi

Canberra. A huge diamond of 1174 carats has recently been found from the Karowe mine in Botswana, which is one of the largest natural diamonds ever found. The remarkable thing is that this huge diamond was found next to some other such diamonds which are 471 carats. , 218 and 159 carats. This indicates that when originally this diamond was made, it may have been more than 2000 carats.
The latest diamond comes weeks after another diamond of over 1000 carats was found at the Jwaneng mine in Botswana.

why are you getting big diamonds
How are we suddenly getting big gems? Are diamonds really as “rare” as it is said about them? Global diamond production in 2020 was a little over 111 million carats, or about 20 tonnes of diamonds. However, only a small fraction of this production is a high quality gemstone. A large number of diamonds are small and weigh less than a carat. Australia’s Argyll mine (once the world’s largest diamond mine by volume) famous for its pink diamonds, closed operations last year as it was not financially affordable. This is because most of the diamonds that came out were small and therefore could only be used for industrial use. Large gem-quality diamonds, on the other hand, are extremely rare. To understand why this is so, we need to know how diamonds are formed and how they are extracted from mines.

How are natural diamonds made?
Natural diamonds are billions of years old. They form extremely deep beneath the ground where temperatures and pressures are high enough to break down carbon atoms into dense, crystalline structures. Some scientists suggest that there are vast amounts of diamonds hundreds of kilometers deep. But till now the deepest excavation has been done up to 12 km. We will never be able to extract these diamonds located deep in the ground.

So we have to work with the smaller pieces that come up to the surface. Diamonds near the surface of the ground are generally believed to come through deep-source volcanic eruptions. These events must be rapid enough to allow the diamonds to reach the surface and are accompanied by extreme heat, shock, or oxygen. should not come in contact with That is, the conditions must be absolutely accurate. Most diamonds are found in igneous rocks called kimberlites. Kimberlite “pipes” are carrot-shaped columns of rocks that are often only a few meters away at the tops of deep-source volcanoes. But diamonds are found in only a small percentage of all known kimberlite sources. And there are only a handful of them where excavations can extract abundant diamonds.

Finding the ideal situation is extremely difficult. Diamonds can be found only in a specific area of ​​a continent because the top layer must be thick enough for deep volcanic events to occur. It must also be stable and pristine – traits that are common in Australia or Africa. What’s more, diamond is a brittle material, despite its reputation for being indestructible. This is a feature that must be taken into account when polishing diamonds as gems. Diamond is also not the most stable combination of carbon atoms at regular atmospheric pressure.

quarrying
Despite the many difficulties we have to face in our journey from the depths of the ground to the surface, the large natural diamonds that survive are often ruined during our efforts to find them. In most diamond mines the rocks are broken by explosion and then fragmented in search of diamonds. New technology however is facilitating the mining of rocks using the X-ray process. It is primarily aimed at “finishing large diamonds”. Although the diamond world is notorious for its secrecy about features, we know that diamonds from the Karoway mine have been obtained using this new technology. And there is a possibility that more such large gems will be found in the future. With the inherent rarity of large diamonds, advances in diamond mining techniques are a boon for Botswana where diamonds constitute a significant part of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP).

diamonds in laboratories
Large size diamonds are also being prepared in laboratories. Artificial diamonds have been made using high-pressure equipment for decades. These devices create physical conditions in laboratories under the depths of the ground. Now, new technology can produce a diamond plate as precise as a food plate under low-pressure conditions and careful control of the chemistry. The method is being used commercially to produce gem-quality diamonds for jewellery. But making a diamond in this way requires patience. A significant portion of a day is spent in producing a millimeter of diamond, which means that mining will continue to play an important role in the diamond industry for some time to come.