At the University of Melbourne,  eight carat diamond has been smashed to smithereens in a purpose to discover the secrets of its origin  
Professor David Phillips, Head of the School of Earth Sciences at the University of Melbourne, recently took a hammer to the diamond to extract two rare, emerald-colored inclusions.

The inclusions are made of a green mineral called clinopyroxenitic, which contains small amounts of radioactive potassium.
This makes it possible to date when the diamonds erupted out of a volcano, after they were formed inside. Knowing this makes it easier to hunt down the original source and the all-important ‘mother lode’ of diamonds.

This diamond was worth $7000 uncut and was found in a South African riverbed by exploration company Namakwa Diamonds.

Recently, Professor Phillips and a University of Melbourne team successfully dated clinopyroxenitic inclusions in diamonds from the Namibian coast .

He had never broken a diamond of this size before and admitted that the chance of inclusion recovery was “about 50/50”.

However, the ‘delicate’ process of hammering the diamonds into pieces was a success.

Professor Phillips has since sent the inclusions to be irradiated at the Oregon State University nuclear reactor, which will then return the inclusions to the University of Melbourne to be dated in the Earth Science’s state-of-the-art spectrometer.
Results are expected early next year.

Courtesy: University of Melbourne

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