An oval-shaped blue diamond weighing 20.46 carats is likely one of the rarest on this planet. Named the Okavango Blue Diamond, it was once found out at Orapa mine in Botswana, and it holds many secrets and techniques about our Earth in its curious azure hue.“From the primary second we noticed the diamond, it was once transparent we had one thing very particular,” mentioned Marcus ter Haar of Okavango Diamond Corporate in a remark. “Everybody who has considered the 20-carat polished diamond has marveled at its distinctive shade, which many see as in contrast to any blue stone they’ve noticed earlier than. It’s extremely odd for a stone of this colour and nature to have come from Botswana – a once-in-a-lifetime in finding.”The diamond is assumed to have come from round 668 kilometers (415 miles) under the bottom, reviews PopSci. This intensity is a spot the place boron isn’t that commonplace, and but the Okavango diamond is filled with it. It incorporates extra boron than nitrogen, a component that’s way more commonplace within the setting and usually holds the bulk proportion of maximum diamonds.Slightly poetically, Okavango’s blue is tied to the large blue, because it’s idea boron was once in a position to make it so deep into the Earth because of tectonic plates colliding, sending one underground and taking boron from the sea with it. All of this took place a fab 3 billion years in the past. It’s a procedure referred to as subduction and one we’re studying extra about via uncommon and extraordinary gemstones just like the Okavango blue diamond.
The uncut Okavango Diamond.Symbol credit score: Okavango Diamond CompanyIt was once declared a “once-in-a-lifetime in finding” following its discovery through the government-owned Okavango Diamond Corporate (ODC) in Botswana. As a coarse stone, it weighed 41.11 carats, however as a minimize diamond, it’s now graded as a Kind llb “Fancy Deep Blue” and an Oval Good Minimize, one of the crucial absolute best polished colour classifications a blue diamond may also be awarded.Those stones are simplest present in positive mines internationally, and it’s since the gemstones right here proportion a geological historical past that contributed to their shade. Diamonds are usually colorless as amalgamations of carbon atoms, however impurities may give them other colours.Coloured diamonds are uncommon, representing about 0.01 % – one in 10,000 – of diamonds mined around the planet. Blue, crimson, inexperienced, violet, orange, and pink are the rarest of all of them, whilst yellow and brown are a little bit extra commonplace.
The diamond in its polished shape.Symbol credit score: Okavango Diamond CompanyThe identify of the arena’s costliest diamond could also be about to visit a crimson hunk o’ carbon known as the Lulo Rose. Just like the Okavango diamond, it comes from a mine the place a number of different rocks of the similar hue were found out, however right here it’s the results of continental stretching and the occasional diatreme spurting them out at the floor.We’re studying increasingly about diamond formation and distribution as time is going on, and a contemporary discovery about how they shuttle to the skin might lend a hand us in finding them. In fact, if you’ll be able to’t in finding one, you’ll be able to all the time be became one.
