The World's Oldest Diamonds By Allison Ryan At Isnare.com Ezine Articles

The oldest diamonds yet discovered by man were found suspended inside of a lump of zircon crystals in Western Australia. Scientists say that these miniscule diamonds are about 4.25 billion years old. It was originally estimated that the earth was formed 4.5 billion years ago, and that the world was covered with an ocean of flowing lava for at least five million years after that. The age of these diamonds prove otherwise, as no diamonds could have formed in a world entirely coated with magma because they would have melted and disintegrated.

However, nobody knows how these ancient diamonds came to form inside of the zircon crystals. Scientists use zircon crystals to study the first few million years of the earth's history, as zircon is an extremely stable and solid substance. Neither its structure nor chemical makeup changes easily so it is fairly safe to assume this makeup is largely unchanged from millions of years ago. They analyzed the minerals and condition of this chunk of zircon in hopes of determining how the diamonds were created, but to no avail.

The diamonds were not sent off to the International Gemological Society for IGI appraisals either, as their incalculable value to the scientific world mixed with their scrawny size made them completely inappropriate for use as gemstones, although ironically, they would likely be more valuable than any other modern, trendy diamond could hope to be. The scientists still needed to heavily research the carbon inside of the diamonds to determine more information. There is a possibility that if the earth cooled down enough for diamonds to form, then life might have begun on earth much sooner than current estimates.

Upon analyzing the carbon content, they discovered that it was possible for life to be in existence around the same time that these diamonds were created, though it is not certain. If they find conclusive evidence for this, then the entirety of natural history as we know it might have to be rewritten. Even though this prehistoric rock is a non conflict diamond, and was not mined simply to fund war activities, its existence will most likely spark a heated debate between scientists everywhere.

This completely muddles the commonly accepted theory of earth's common years. Diamonds form when the pressure of an area is greater than the temperature, but the zircon that these diamonds were in showed no signs of undergoing great pressure. Possibly diamonds are formed in a different way than originally thought, or maybe zircon isn't as stable as was assumed throughout so many years of research which could contradict the idea that the chemical makeup is basically the same as it was millions of years ago.

The discovery does not, however, make any statement whatsoever about diamonds that are used for diamond jewelry (earrings, rings, bracelets, necklaces), including EGL loose diamonds. Advocates of the Cool Early Earth (CEE) theory have taken this opportunity to further question the belief that the earth's infancy was spent in a fiery ocean of lava. The CEE says that the early days of the planet were cool enough for liquid water to flow, and the state of the ancient hunks of zircon are proof that the surface temperature back then was low enough for such things to happen.

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