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Diamonds were not always diamonds.
Diamonds come from deep within the
earth and how they got there and
into our jewelry is a great tale.
Billions of years ago, sources of
carbon were buried in the earth.
Over time, this material sank deeper
and deeper into the earth. And over
billions of years, with the pressure
from the earth above and the heat
from the Earth’s core, transformed
it into a diamond. Diamonds may be
the oldest thing you will every own
being that it takes Mother Nature
about 3 billion years to create one.
Getting the diamonds closer to the
Earth’s surface is the hard part.
One way is by tectonic plate
movement. When one plate slides
over another or collides, they come
closer to the surface creating
mountains like the Himalayas, Alp
and Andes exposing the layers of
earth, but this method is very rare.
A more common way diamonds make it
to the surface is through volcanic
activity. Diamonds trapped below
the Earth’s crust travel with the
liquid magma where it reaches an
exit through a volcano. Not all
diamonds reach the surface during a
volcanic eruption. Some get trapped
within small veins of magma inside
the volcano. Once closer to the
surface, the diamonds can be mined. |
