Is Russia looking at taking the first steps toward diamond mining under the earth’s crust?
According to scientists at The Russian Academy of Sciences, they have determined that diamonds may have harvested in the areas between tectonic plates in the earth’s lithosphere.
By definition, the earth’s tectonic plates are the sublayers of the top crust of the planet. They move around and interact with each other causing what scientists believe is the current alignment of the land masses of the planet as well as the volcanoes and earthquakes we continue to experience.
The group of Russian scientists, led by Yuri Pulyanov, have taken minerals common to the areas between the tectonic plates and simulated the amount of heat and pressure that would be found that many kilometres beneath our planet’s surface. These minerals would crystallize and become diamonds.
As we have discussed in previous posts, the demand for diamonds could outweigh the supply of the stones within the next decade. Could this be the first step to tipping the scales back? Or is this merely just a fanciful film idea like Journey To The Center Of The Earth or The Core?
Keep in mind, what lies beneath the earth’s surface isn’t a new area of discussion for Russia. They began an ambitious drilling project in the 1960s to reach below the planet’s crust. The project became the Kola Superdeep Borehole in the Pechengsky District of the Soviet Union. The goal had nothing to do with searching for diamonds, it was merely an attempt to see how for down they could drill. The hole, which ended up reaching seven miles deep, was abandoned in 2005 due to lack of funding. Perhaps this famous hole could become the starting point of the first subterranean diamond exploration.
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