The diamond itself has enormous value, but it’s a tiny grain of rock lodged inside the precious gemstone that has scientists excited.
Scientists have discovered a never-before-seen mineral nestled inside a diamond found 105 miles below the surface of the earth, in South Africa’s Koffiefontein diamond mine.
They hope the opaque, dark green rock will help reveal new intel on what goes on in the mysterious mantle layer of the earth, which is still too deep for humans to see firsthand.
According to National Geographic, the diamond-producing mantle is about 84% of the Earth’s composition and begins some 3 to 46 miles below the surface, stretching some 1,800 miles down toward the core. (To put that in perspective, the Mariana Trench, the deepest point recorded on Earth, is barely 7 miles deep.)
The highly pressurized, unfathomably hot — between 1,832 and 6,692 degrees Fahrenheit — layer is where scientists believe diamonds originate, before they’re pushed to the surface to be mined.
Researchers say this mantle mineral is particularly unique because of its unusual composition: It contains elements that aren’t usually found in the rest of the mantle. The scientists said in a statement that it’s still a mystery how these elements ended up in the newfound mineral, which they named “goldschmidtite,” after geochemist Victor Moritz Goldschmidt, according to the study published in the journal American Mineralogist.
Geochemist Graham Pearson, who also worked on the study, says the “highly unusual” material helps to shed light on “the deep roots of continents during diamond formation.”
The mineral goldschmidtite is now at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, Live Science reports.