In a very rare event, miners in Russia's Udachnaya mine unearthed a strange rock embedded with about 30,000 tiny diamonds.
Even though it was once-in-a-lifetime kind of find, the company- Alrosa - donated the precious rock to the Russian Academy of Sciences saying that the diamonds were very small and even if they extract them, they cannot be used as gems.
The moment they saw it, the miners at Alrosa's mine knew that this red and green coloured 30mm rock was not an ordinary one. On examination, it was revealed that the rock had about 30,000 tiny diamonds that were in concentration of 1 million times higher than normal.
Based on X-rays of the rock, scientists revealed that the diamonds measured merely 1mm and were octahedral in shape that can be described as two pyramids stuck together at the base.
Scientists at the American Geophysical Union's annual meeting on 15 December, stated that discovery of such a diamond-rich rock was significant in many ways.
"The exciting thing for me is there are 30,000 itty-bitty, perfect octahedrons, and not one big diamond. It's like they formed instantaneously," said Larry Taylor, a geologist at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Fox News reports. Taylor was the one to present the findings at the meeting.
The scientists believe that this discovery might help in understanding as to how diamonds are made.
All that is known about the formation of diamonds is that they are crystals of pure carbon that are formed under crushing pressures and intense heat in the Earth's mantle – at a depth of around 150 km. However, some processes regarding the creation of diamonds remain a mystery.
"The [chemical] reactions in which diamonds occur still remain an enigma," Mr Taylor told Live Science, which first reported the story, The Telegraph reports.
He further said: "The associations of minerals will tell us something about the genesis of this rock, which is a strange one indeed."
Taylor works with other researchers at the Russian Academy of Sciences to study diamonds found in the Udachnaya mine.
