Tons of diamonds made by mother earth are hiding inside the earth just beneath your feet. But before you start drilling let me inform you that these precious ones lie at around 100 miles deep.
With the help of seismic waves, researchers found some sparkly gemstones in an astonishing quantity. Recent studies show that our mother earth is packed approximately a thousand times more diamonds than scientists previously thought.
Organizations such as the United States Geological Survey employ a network of sensitive devices known as seismometers to detect every tremor and burp our earth generates.
This information can not only assist scientists in better to comprehend temblors but it can also be used to construct images of Earth's interior. The stiffness, temperature, density, and composition of the rock all have an impact on how these waves go through it. So, by examining our planet's tremors, scientists can predict what lies beneath—no mega-drills required.
However, scholars have detected something strange over the years. Seismic waves move far quicker than expected a hundred miles below the surface. This region has cratonic roots, which are inverted mountains of "cold, rigid, stiff mantle that supports the continents above them," according to Joshua Garber, a postdoctoral researcher at Penn State University and study author.
Cratonic rocks are astonishingly old, having formed and stabilized during the first two billion years of Earth's 4.5-billion-year history. Researchers have gleaned information on their composition from unusual volcanic eruptions that send deep pools of magma rising to the surface, carrying fragments of old rock with them.
However, the precise composition of cratonic roots, as well as the reason sound waves fly through them, have long been a mystery. (For example, researchers recently discovered a hitherto undiscovered form of mineral in a super-deep diamond.)
The new study used seismic data to investigate various models that recreate the three-dimensional warbling of waves traveling through Earth. They next studied rock composition, buoyancy, and even electromagnetic of various materials to fine-tune the recipe of the rocks that produce the observed wave speeds.
"What we discovered, in contrast to earlier studies, is that you can't merely utilize the dominant rock type in the mantle—peridotite—to explain these velocities," Garber adds. "You'll need something a little stiffer."
The answer is diamonds, lots of diamonds.
They estimate that little over a quadrillion—a one with 15 zeroes—tons of diamonds lie hidden within Earth when combined with a dash of oceanic crust rock called eclogite. To be fair, Garber points out that this is only a small percentage of all the rocks on the planet. Diamond makes up about 2% of the cratonic roots by volume.
Carbon dioxide and carbon-rich minerals such as graphite, calcite, and diamond have long been known to swirl beneath the Earth's crust as a tremendous amount of carbon. Though these gleaming stones can command a high price in a jewelry store, they are not geologically rare.
"It was unexpected, but not unprecedented," Garber says of the most recent diamond estimate.
A quadrillion tonnes of glitz is still a lot of glitz. "There's clearly something here that appeals to our imagination," says Maureen Long, a seismologist at Yale University who was not involved in the study.
Long says that the study is "an interesting and elegant outcome in a number of respects," and she notes that the research is meticulously conducted and takes into consideration various influencing factors.
For the time being, Long and van der Lee both agree that the effort is a step in the right direction because it is the result of a wide group of partners with diverse backgrounds and abilities. This month-long event, also known as the Cooperative Institute for Dynamic Earth Research, brings together a diverse group of scientists for intensive research.
And one crucial issue remains: Will humans ever be able to access these diamond riches? Garber believes it is unlikely. "At least not on human timescales," he continues. Even with cutting-edge technology, humans have only excavated a hole 7.6 miles deep so far, so digging a hole a hundred miles or more would undoubtedly be a supervillain-sized problem.
How low are we able to go? That is the task that scientists throughout the world have taken on over the last five decades, with each attempting to drill a hole that is deeper than the last one.
The objective is to get to the Earth's mantle. The mantle covers 40 percent or more of the planet's 4,000-mile radius. Just beneath the crust and above the core, the Earth's 1,800-mile-thick mantle sits—or, more accurately, heaves up and down. The crust, which varies in thickness from three to twenty-five miles, makes up a small portion of the globe.
The mantle is the primary driving force behind the planet's ongoing evolution and includes a geological record of much of Earth's history.
"We will have a better understanding of volcanoes and earthquakes, and a better understanding of how the planet as whole works if we have a better understanding of what the mantle is and how it behaves," said Benjamin Andrews, a research geologist and curator of the Smithsonian's National Rock and Ore Collection.
With Project Mohole, scientists took their first stab at the mantle in 1958. Engineers from the United States drilled through the Pacific Ocean floor in Guadalupe, Mexico. However, Congress cut off the financing in 1966, before the drillers could take up the mantle.
The desire to drill deeper sparked a global scientific competition analogous to the Space Race. Soviet geologists took on the issue in 1970, drilling over the Kola Peninsula, which protrudes eastward from the Scandinavian landmass.
The Kola Superdeep Borehole was only 9 inches in diameter, yet it was the deepest hole at 40,230 feet (12,262 meters). It took over 20 years to reach that 7.5-mile depth, which is only half the distance to the mantle. Among the more intriguing discoveries are microscopic plankton fossils discovered four kilometers underground. The Kola hole was abandoned in 1992 because drillers found higher-than-expected temperatures—356 degrees Fahrenheit, rather than the 212 degrees predicted.
The heat wreaks havoc on machinery. According to Andrews, the higher the temperature, the more liquid the atmosphere becomes and the more difficult it is to maintain the bore. It's like attempting to keep a pit in the middle of a pot of boiling soup.
German scientists launched the German Continental Deep Drilling Program in Bavaria in 1990. The researchers crossed across seismic plates and experienced temperatures of up to 600 degrees Fahrenheit. They only made it approximately six kilometers before they ran out of money. They did, however, learn more about seismic activity and the nature of the crust.
Not surprisingly, because the crust is thinner, some deep holes in the ocean floor have been drilled. According to James F. Allan, program director for the National Science Foundation's Ocean Drilling Program, the specialist Japanese drillship Chikyu holds the record for the deepest offshore hole drilled for scientific purposes—about 10,000 feet (almost 2 miles) into the seafloor.
The oil and gas industry also claims some deep holes, both on and off the coast. The offshore record is held by BP's Deepwater Horizon. The drilling rig, which was destroyed in an explosion in 2010, managed to reach a depth of 30,000 feet or roughly 5 miles.
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