In a new study, scientists found that the Earth's cratonic roots- the ancient parts of Earth's rocks that look like upside down mountains, located in the center of the tectonic plates and spanning 321 kilometers - contain up to two percent of diamonds.
In long calculations, the total estimate is more than a QUADRILLION ton of diamonds hiding below Earth’s worth £68,600,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 – that's 68 septillion pounds.
In an interview with "The SUN", Ulrich Paul, a scientist at the MIT Department of Earth and one of the authors of the study, said that the new assessments prove that diamonds are not so rare as we thought to date, and that on a geological scale, they are even relatively common.
Scientists made the discovery after monitoring sound waves to uncover the types of rocks hiding beneath our planet's surface - the same method used to measure earthquakes. The sound waves made it possible to create an image that describes the earth's surface. These signals move at varying speeds depending on the composition, temperature, and density of the rocks and the minerals they travel in, allowing scientists to estimate the types of rocks beneath the earth's surface by comparing the velocity of sound waves. They found that these sound waves accelerate as they pass through the carotonic roots and following a series of experiments in the laboratory where sound waves were sent through different rocks, the researchers found that rocks containing two to three percent diamonds could affect that speed of sound.
Geologists believe that all the diamonds that are accessible to mining today actually originate from the Earth's envelope and have "come out" through deep volcanic eruptions. The new amount of diamonds hiding underground is 1,000 percent higher than previously estimated.
Although the thought of an endless amount of diamonds seems closer than ever, it is important to mention that the caratonic roots are more than 100 kilometers below the surface of the Earth, a distance no one has been able to drill to date.
