Western Australia Diamonds and Early Earth

As we all know, you can go to every continent and find some sort of diamond there. We still face the question of just how these diamonds got to their current place. This is something that has had many theories surrounding it, and has been the cause of great discussion. Today we are going to talk about diamonds from Western Australia. There are some discussions about these types of diamonds, so it is important that we take some time and figure out what is going on with them. It should always be a goal to make sure you know more about the diamonds that are being placed on fingers. It is a fun thing to do!

These Diamonds

Inside the Jack Hills region of Western Australia, scientists have discovered diamonds. These diamonds are more than 4 billion years old and were stuck inside some zircon crystals. These are actually considered the oldest terrestrial diamonds that have ever been discovered. Scientists are excited to be dealing with some of the oldest materials that is on the planet. There is a lot of insight that can be gained from this information, as there is with many diamonds that are found. Let’s take a look at some of it.

The Insight

The insight that we can gain from this material is large. We could get insight that leads us to learn more about the early evolution of the crust of our planet. This is only possible because it is some of the oldest material on our planet. There are debates that are going on that deal with whether or not the early Earth was covered by hot lava oceans, or whether it was covered by oceans of water. These diamonds could help us in this debate. They retain their chemical nature because they are some of the toughest substances on the Earth. Learning about warming and cooling of the Earth is very vital, especially now when we still are gaining scientific insight into it.

Dating These Diamonds

These diamonds are actually 1 billion years older then the previously oldest known diamonds. There is also evidence to suggest that they were formed in material that crystallized within 300 million years of the Earth’s formation. As you can see, we are dealing with some pretty serious stuff here. These gems were also formed within ultra high pressure conditions, and they might be able to show just how big the continental crust of the Earth was.