While most sparkle-loving gem enthusiasts know that diamonds are formed under intense pressure, the rest of a diamond’s journey from deep earth to store shelf is less well known.
It’s not just the way a diamond looks that can take your breath away – the back story is equally mind-blowing, and a staggering example of just how far we’ll go to capture the magic of a diamond for ourselves in the form of beautiful keepsakes we love to wear and cherish. In this blog, we’ll explore the origins of a diamond and we’ll discover a little more about why we feel so very compelled to make diamonds a part of our own journeys and celebrations in life.
The making of a diamond
For a diamond to form, temperature, depth, and pressure must reach key limits. The absolutely extraordinary formula for natural diamond production goes a little like this:
- Carbon Dioxide, which is what every natural diamond starts out as, must be buried at around 100 Miles deep into the earth, into the Earths mantle, which is underneath the Earth’s crust. While this terrain isn’t liquid magma (it’s actually solid rock) it’s still ferociously hot- and this is the ideal condition for a diamond to commence formation.
- To form a diamond, the temperature must reach 2,200 degrees Fahrenheit (1204 Celsius).
- Essentially, pressure must reach around 730,000 pounds for each surface inch squared. This combined impossible temperature and unimaginable pressure cause a response which bonds carbon atoms together- forming a diamond.
- Diamonds need to reach the surface of the earth if they’re going to be found- they make the farthest stretches of their journey via volcano.
- By the time they reach us, most diamonds are between 1 billion and 3.5 billion years old.
The expulsion of a diamond is a very rare event. It normally takes a volcanic event called a Kimberlite eruption for diamonds to reach the earth’s minable surface. While we’d hope the most fraught and intense leg of the journey is over, for many involved in the sourcing of these incredible objects, the journey has only just begun.
As we don’t have any way of drilling into the earth to retrieve these beauties before they reach a depth we can actually access, we’ve taken on some hair-raising initiatives for getting hold of them- which we’ll talk about in our next blog release.
Stay tuned for our next blog, where we discuss the process of digging up diamonds; ethical diamond mining and how to ensure your pieces honour the evolutionary process of earth’s precious treasures. Australian Diamond Company are proud to offer a first-class consultancy that showcases our sophisticated range. To see our showstopping pieces, be sure to arrange a booking with one of our skilled specialists today.
