Editor’s Note
This article explores an extraordinary geological discovery where a rare mineral, not found naturally on Earth, has been discovered encased within a diamond—itself a product of extreme conditions. The find highlights the remarkable and often hidden complexities of our planet’s deep geological processes.
Diamond is recognized as the hardest substance in the world. Its formation is a very difficult process, requiring extreme pressure and temperature, which is why it is very hard to create even in a laboratory. In such a scenario, if a mineral is found inside a diamond, it becomes an even rarer occurrence. But if that mineral itself is rare, it becomes a truly astonishing coincidence. In just such a rare coincidence, a rare mineral has been found inside a diamond that cannot be found on the Earth’s surface.
Even after knowing about many places on Earth, scientists sometimes find strange things. Sometimes something is found in a place where its presence is surprising, and sometimes finding something in a unique location is surprising. But this time, scientists have found a mineral that had never been seen before and was found where its presence was perhaps not even expected. This mineral was found inside a diamond. It was discovered at great depths in the Earth’s mantle and has been named Davemaoite.
This mineral found deep in the Earth’s mine is calcium silicate perovskite. It forms under the high-pressure and high-temperature conditions found in the lower mantle. The mineral is named after geophysicist Ho-Kwang (Dave) Mao, who has studied high-pressure elements. This mineral has a crystalline structure that is found only in the layer between the Earth’s core and crust under high temperature and pressure conditions.
Scientists had long ago estimated that such minerals cannot be found on the Earth’s surface. In a study published in the journal Science, researchers said that calcium silicate perovskite (CaSiO3) forms in a very important geochemical state of the lower mantle because its elements do not match with the upper mantle.
Chemical analysis of this mineral revealed that it contains isotopes of uranium, thorium, and potassium. The research paper states that Davemaoite may contain three major heat-producing elements, and previous experiments indicate that uranium and thorium are among them. It is these elements that generate heat in the Earth’s lower mantle.
This study was led by Oliver Tschauner from the Department of Geoscience at the University of Nevada. Researchers studied a green, octahedral-shaped diamond extracted from the Orapa mine in Botswana, which is the world’s largest open-pit diamond mine.
According to Nature, this diamond was sold to mineralogist George Rossman at the California Institute of Technology, and Tschauner investigated the minerals inside this diamond.
He told Live Science. This new discovery is important for the scientific community because it has not lost its original structure from decades ago when it came out of the Earth. The primary reason for this is that it was inside a diamond found deep within the Earth. It is only the second such high-pressure mantle silicate that has been observed on the Earth’s surface. It has now been accepted by the International Mineralogical Association’s Commission on New Minerals, Nomenclature and Classification for scientific naming.