What is made of compressed CARBON, OLDer than sin and PRACTICAL to wear? It sounds like a bad joke and it certainly doesn’t sound very appealing. But wait… the answer is not Dr. Scholl’s inserts – it is: a DIAMOND. Okay – diamonds are gorgeous, the way the light bounces off the facets and refracts and reflects and all that good stuff. But they are ever so much more.

The awesome architecture of a diamond is structured in 8 atom units, fundamentally a cube. CARBON cube. This architecture is very stable and rigid, which is why diamonds have an extremely high melting point and are so very hard.

Virtually all carbon on Earth comes from the stars. As in ‘We are stardust, we are golden’. The rock in which diamonds are found is OLD, but the diamonds themselves are approximately 3.3 billion years old. This difference is due to the fact that volcanic rock where diamonds are found did not create them, but only transported them from the Earth’s mantle to the surface. Some diamonds from meteorites are from carbon at the place of impact and some diamond crystals within meteorites are coming direct from the stars and are 5 billion years old. Yes, 5 billion.

And they are actually PRACTICAL. Kiss of death, right? But not with diamonds. They are super hard, in fact 4 times harder than the next hardest natural mineral, they can only be scratched by other diamonds and maintain their polish extremely well. Unlike many other gems, they are practical for daily wear because they wear so well.

Furthermore, they are green. Most natural diamonds come from the mantle of the earth, but the carbon for a few diamonds is recycled carbon of microorganisms, formed into diamonds by the earth’s crust via plate tectonics. Repeat: RECYCLED microorganisms.

Diamonds are interesting in many ways, not the least of which is because the things that make them attractive (carbon, old, practical) are not traditionally exciting. But even better, the only thing that makes them unattractive is their PERFECT CLEAVAGE. Yeah, that’s right. Their only fault. Take that, plastic surgeons.

Tags: 4 times harder, 8 atom unit, architecture of a diamond, daily wear, diamond crystals, diamonds, diamonds have a high melting point, diaomond, facets, gems, meteorites, natural diamonds, natural mineral, perfect cleavage, recycled carbon, reflects, refracts

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 28th, 2009 at 7:47 pm and is filed under Diamonds, Tips, Info & Links. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.