tag:theconversation.com,2011:/global/topics/diamonds-24142/articlesDiamonds – The Conversation2023-12-08T12:27:01Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2192072023-12-08T12:27:01Z2023-12-08T12:27:01ZErotic Vagrancy: Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor biography revels in scandal and excess of Hollywood glamour couple<p><a href="https://www.waterstones.com/author/roger-lewis/136946">Roger Lewis’s biographies</a> are always rich, wayward, engrossing, idiosyncratic and above all obsessive, which seems entirely fitting for evoking the particular qualities of his latest subject – the celebrity couple to end them all, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Richard-Burton-Welsh-actor">Richard Burton</a> and <a href="https://www.biography.com/actors/elizabeth-taylor">Elizabeth Taylor</a>.</p>
<p>Lewis’s substantial <a href="https://www.waterstones.com/book/erotic-vagrancy/roger-lewis/9780857381729">new book</a>, Erotic Vagrancy: Everything About Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor, takes its title from a phrase used in a <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/usshowbiz/article-12078923/Burton-Taylors-scandal-soaked-affair-epic-Cleopatra.html">papal condemnation</a> of the couple when their affair began during the making of 20th Century Fox’s epic 1963 film <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2023/jun/12/cleopatra-60th-anniversary-elizabeth-taylor-richard-burton">Cleopatra</a> in Rome. This served to emphasise the atmosphere of notoriety that surrounded Taylor and Burton’s relationship throughout its 20-year duration.</p>
<p>It also suggests the way they represented a new (and to the Vatican, unwelcome) approach to sexual and romantic conduct. Previous marriages were dispensed with in pursuit of this electric, ecstatic new coupling. The media pursued the couple as they criss-crossed the world on private jets and luxury yachts, hoovering up enormous diamonds and other expensive trinkets along the way.</p>
<p>But the vision of love Taylor and Burton represented was far from sweetness and light. Instead, it seems to have been a prolonged struggle of can’t-live-with, can’t-live-without, characterised by drunken arguments and bitter recrimination. The couple’s films then replayed and remixed it for duly fascinated paying cinema customers – most famously in 1966’s <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2016/sep/18/whos-afraid-of-virginia-woolf-edward-albee">Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?</a></p>
<h2>Jet-set celebrity glamour</h2>
<p>Lewis suggests the couple were at the vanguard of contemporary celebrity culture, while also taking care to frame them as creatures of their time – members of a long-vanished glamorous jet-set whose 1960s and ’70s haunts have all but disappeared. Lewis describes his undimmed and even growing affection for his subjects in spite of – or perhaps because of – their shameless bad behaviour, from very public fights to unfulfilled charitable promises.</p>
<p>Their love and its emotional maelstrom undoubtedly inflicted enormous harm, on others as well as themselves. And its narcissistic showiness, writ in priceless jewels and ardent gestures across a global stage, was vulgar. However, Lewis offers an incisive deconstruction and defence of vulgarity as a human quality, reframing the couple’s outrageous extravagance as a generosity of spirit, living large and leaning into their role as collective fantasy figures.</p>
<p>And he loves their films, especially the egregious flops and off-kilter experiments like <a href="https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/boom-1968">Boom!</a> (1968), <a href="https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/hammersmith-is-out-1972">Hammersmith Is Out</a> (1972) and <a href="https://screenbound.co.uk/divorce-his-divorce-hers/">Divorce His / Divorce Hers</a> (1973), discerning in their bizarre contours a fever dream of the couple’s romance.</p>
<h2>Myths and spells</h2>
<p>Burton’s journey was the more extraordinary of the two: from Welsh working-class impoverishment to full movie mega-stardom, by way of his prodigious charisma as a young actor. Lewis alleges Burton’s schoolmaster svengali and adoptive father had less than honourable intentions towards his ward, but he was the facilitator of Burton’s longed-for exit from the valleys.</p>
<p>No wonder Burton nursed a longstanding fascination with the <a href="https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20170907-what-the-myth-of-faust-can-teach-us">Faust legend</a>, feeling he had sold his soul to the devil to attain worldly glory, including “the face that launched a thousand ships” in the form of the beautiful Taylor – who played the Helen of Troy role opposite her husband’s Faustus in <a href="https://kultguyskeep.wordpress.com/2018/02/26/doctor-faustus-1967-film-review/">Burton’s 1967 screen adaptation</a> of Christopher Marlowe’s play.</p>
<p>Lewis appears to identify slightly more with the Welshman’s dark moods than he does the dramas of the divine Elizabeth, a pampered princess and movie star from childhood. He is in thrall to the idea of Taylor as witch, casting a spell over Burton.</p>
<p>Lewis uses Kingsley Amis’s phrasing to characterise the star as “a wrapped-up-in-herself female” and wonders aloud if women are “generally less rational, more instinctive and immediate, than your males”. To which one can only respond: hogwash. Hogwash that depends on completely ignoring what an irrational mystic Burton seems to have been, continually invoking his alchemical mythic origin as a figure created in the bowels of the Welsh earth.</p>
<p>This is not a feminist book – there is a broadside against “rubbishy academic tracts by frightening feminists” in the author’s opening remarks on the existing Burton-Taylor literature. Lewis acknowledges the physical abuse Taylor suffered at the hands of her first husband, Nicky Hilton, while she was still in her teens, but quibbles over the dates of the pregnancy she says she miscarried after being beaten by him – not a good look.</p>
<p>He goes on to suggest that many of the actress’s subsequent health problems were psychosomatic or self-inflicted, or just simple malingering. But thankfully, these potentially misogynistic notes are counterbalanced by other moments of empathy and insight. There is full-throated celebration of Taylor, especially as she aged and gained weight, as an unruly woman who refused to adhere to the template of feminine probity and modesty. Her greed – for love, adventure, sex, food, excitement, wealth, beauty – is not censured but saluted.</p>
<p>Erotic Vagrancy is packed with details that not only make you pause and gasp, but which penetrate the core of what it means to be famous, or infamous, and in love.</p>
<p>And its wit makes it sparkle and glitter like one of Taylor’s extravagant diamonds – coruscating in the true sense of the word. The research and writing has clearly been a labour of love for Lewis, and the result is a lovingly all-encompassing celebrity biography which interrogates both celebrity and biography as concepts.</p>
<p>But it does so with levity and personality, always wearing its learning and its eloquence lightly. To invoke the title of a <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/goings-on-about-town/movies/magnificent-obsession">film starring one of Taylor’s pals, Rock Hudson</a>, this book is the result of a “magnificent obsession” with Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor, and all the better for it.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Melanie Williams does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The scandal that engulfed the tempestuous couple from the beginning fed a media and public obsession that lasted for the rest of their lives.Melanie Williams, Professor of Film and Television Studies, University of East AngliaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2146142023-10-24T12:22:02Z2023-10-24T12:22:02ZSpace rocks and asteroid dust are pricey, but these aren’t the most expensive materials used in science<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/552576/original/file-20231006-23-aam2il.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C34%2C5751%2C3794&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Meteorites can get pricey, but they're not the most expensive material. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/FranceMeteoriteAuction/e075e1b22656489db39610bafb0682af/photo?Query=meteorites&mediaType=photo&sortBy=&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=341&currentItemNo=5&vs=true">AP Photo/Thibault Camus</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>After a journey of seven years and nearly 4 billion miles, <a href="https://science.nasa.gov/mission/osiris-rex">NASA’s OSIRIS-REx</a> <a href="https://www.space.com/osiris-rex-asteroid-samples-land-houston">spacecraft landed</a> gently in the Utah desert on the morning of Sept. 24, 2023, with a precious payload. <a href="https://science.nasa.gov/mission/osiris-rex">The spacecraft</a> brought back a sample from the asteroid Bennu.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/552573/original/file-20231006-27-cm9a07.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="An artist's illustration of a gray metallic spacecraft hovering above the dark surface of an asteroid, with an arm that reaches down to the surface." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/552573/original/file-20231006-27-cm9a07.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/552573/original/file-20231006-27-cm9a07.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=376&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/552573/original/file-20231006-27-cm9a07.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=376&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/552573/original/file-20231006-27-cm9a07.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=376&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/552573/original/file-20231006-27-cm9a07.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=472&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/552573/original/file-20231006-27-cm9a07.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=472&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/552573/original/file-20231006-27-cm9a07.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=472&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">OSIRIS-REx collected a sample from the asteroid Bennu.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/20c047ec48f74f6995ffad6b0f54422c?ext=true">NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center via AP</a></span>
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<p>Roughly half a pound of material collected from the <a href="https://science.nasa.gov/solar-system/asteroids/101955-bennu/facts/">85 million-ton asteroid</a> (77.6 billion kg) will help scientists learn about the <a href="https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/missions/osiris-rex/in-depth/">formation of the solar system</a>, including whether <a href="https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/asteroids-comets-and-meteors/asteroids/101955-bennu/in-depth/">asteroids like Bennu</a> include the chemical ingredients for life.</p>
<p>NASA’s mission was budgeted at <a href="https://www.asteroidmission.org/qa/">US$800 million</a> and will end up costing around <a href="https://www.planetary.org/space-policy/cost-of-osiris-rex">$1.16 billion</a> for <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasas-first-asteroid-sample-has-landed-now-secure-in-clean-room/">just under 9 ounces of sample</a> (255 g). But is this the most expensive material known? Not even close.</p>
<p>I’m a <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=OrRLRQ4AAAAJ&hl=en">professor of astronomy</a>. I use Moon and Mars rocks in my teaching and have a modest collection of meteorites. I marvel at the fact that I can hold in my hand something that is billions of years old from billions of miles away.</p>
<h2>The cost of sample return</h2>
<p>A handful of asteroid works out to $132 million <a href="https://www.hoodmwr.com/things-that-weigh-around-1-ounce/">per ounce</a>, or $4.7 million per gram. That’s about 70,000 times the <a href="https://goldprice.org/">price of gold</a>, which has been in the range of $1,800 to $2,000 per ounce ($60 to $70 per gram) for the past few years.</p>
<p>The first extraterrestrial material returned to Earth came from the Apollo program. Between 1969 and 1972, six Apollo missions brought back 842 pounds (382 kg) of <a href="https://curator.jsc.nasa.gov/lunar/">lunar samples</a>.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.planetary.org/space-policy/cost-of-apollo">total price tag</a> for the Apollo program, adjusted for inflation, was $257 billion. These Moon rocks were a relative bargain at $19 million per ounce ($674 thousand per gram), and of course Apollo had additional value in demonstrating technologies for human spaceflight. </p>
<p>NASA is planning to bring samples back from Mars in the early 2030s to see if any contain traces of ancient life. The <a href="https://mars.nasa.gov/msr/">Mars Sample Return</a> mission aims to return <a href="https://www.universetoday.com/161264/we-can-only-bring-30-samples-of-mars-back-to-earth-how-do-we-decide/">30 sample tubes</a> with a <a href="https://downloads.regulations.gov/NASA-2022-0002-0002/attachment_5.pdf">total weight of a pound</a> (450 g). The <a href="https://science.nasa.gov/mission/mars-2020-perseverance">Perseverance rover</a> has already <a href="https://www.universetoday.com/160109/perseverance-is-building-up-a-big-collection-of-mars-samples/">cached 10 of these samples</a>. </p>
<p>However, <a href="https://www.science.org/content/article/mars-sample-return-got-new-price-tag-it-s-big">costs have grown</a> because the mission is complex, involving multiple robots and spacecraft. Bringing back the samples could run $11 billion, putting their cost at $690 million per ounce ($24 million per gram), five times the unit cost of the Bennu samples.</p>
<h2>Some space rocks are free</h2>
<p>Some space rocks cost nothing. Almost 50 tons of free samples from the solar system <a href="https://science.nasa.gov/solar-system/meteors-meteorites/">rain down on the Earth</a> every day. Most burn up in the atmosphere, but if they reach the ground <a href="https://www.amnh.org/explore/news-blogs/on-exhibit-posts/meteor-meteorite-asteroid">they’re called meteorites</a>, and most of those come from asteroids. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/types-of-meteorites.html">Meteorites can get costly</a> because it can be difficult to recognize and retrieve them. Rocks all look similar unless you’re a geology expert. </p>
<p>Most meteorites are stony, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/science/chondrite">called chondrites</a>, and they can be bought online for as little as $15 per ounce (50 cents per gram). Chondrites differ from normal rocks in containing <a href="https://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/permanent/meteorites/origins-of-the-solar-system/chondrules">round grains called chondrules</a> that formed as molten droplets in space at the birth of the solar system 4.5 billion years ago.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/552568/original/file-20231006-19-kgbnz8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A meteorite that looks like a long gray rock with dark gray veins running across it." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/552568/original/file-20231006-19-kgbnz8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/552568/original/file-20231006-19-kgbnz8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=305&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/552568/original/file-20231006-19-kgbnz8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=305&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/552568/original/file-20231006-19-kgbnz8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=305&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/552568/original/file-20231006-19-kgbnz8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=384&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/552568/original/file-20231006-19-kgbnz8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=384&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/552568/original/file-20231006-19-kgbnz8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=384&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">A chondrite from the Viñales meteorite, which originated from the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ordinary_chondrite_%28Vi%C3%B1ales_Meteorite%29_15.jpg">Ser Amantio di Nicolao/Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
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<p><a href="https://aerolite.org/shop/iron-meteorites/">Iron meteorites</a> are distinguished by a dark crust, caused by melting of the surface as they come through the atmosphere, and an internal pattern of long metallic crystals. They cost $50 per ounce ($1.77 per gram) or even higher. <a href="https://geology.com/meteorites/value-of-meteorites.shtml">Pallasites</a> are stony-iron meteorites laced with the mineral olivine. When cut and polished, they have a translucent yellow-green color and can cost over $1,000 per ounce ($35 per gram).</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/552571/original/file-20231006-21-vjnv0r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A brown-gray meteorite that's roughly circular with textured ridges" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/552571/original/file-20231006-21-vjnv0r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/552571/original/file-20231006-21-vjnv0r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/552571/original/file-20231006-21-vjnv0r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/552571/original/file-20231006-21-vjnv0r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/552571/original/file-20231006-21-vjnv0r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/552571/original/file-20231006-21-vjnv0r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/552571/original/file-20231006-21-vjnv0r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An iron meteorite.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Odessa_%28iron%29_meteorite.jpg">Llez/Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
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<p>More than a few meteorites have reached us from the Moon and Mars. Close to 600 have been recognized as <a href="https://sites.wustl.edu/meteoritesite/items/lunar-meteorites/">coming from the Moon</a>, and <a href="https://www.catawiki.com/en/stories/4683-10-most-expensive-meteorites-ever-offered-up-on-earth">the largest</a>, weighing 4 pounds (1.8 kg), sold for a price that works out to be about $4,700 per ounce ($166 per gram). </p>
<p>About 175 meteorites are identified as <a href="https://www2.jpl.nasa.gov/snc/">having come from Mars</a>. <a href="https://aerolite.org/shop/mars-meteorites/">Buying one</a> would cost about $11,000 per ounce ($388 per gram). </p>
<p>Researchers can figure out <a href="https://science.nasa.gov/solar-system/meteors-meteorites/facts/">where meteorites come from</a> by using their landing trajectories to project their paths back to the asteroid belt or comparing their composition with different classes of asteroids. Experts can tell where Moon and Mars rocks come from by their geology and mineralogy.</p>
<p>The limitation of these “free” samples is that there is no way to know where on the Moon or Mars they came from, which limits their scientific usefulness. Also, they start to get contaminated as soon as they land on Earth, so it’s hard to tell if any microbes within them are extraterrestrial.</p>
<h2>Expensive elements and minerals</h2>
<p>Some elements and minerals are expensive because they’re scarce. Simple <a href="http://www.leonland.de/elements_by_price/en/list">elements in the periodic table</a> have low prices. Per ounce, carbon costs one-third of a cent, iron costs 1 cent, aluminum costs 56 cents, and even mercury is less than a dollar (per 100 grams, carbon costs $2.40, iron costs less than a cent and alumnium costs 19 cents). Silver is $14 per ounce (50 cents per gram), and gold, $1,900 per ounce ($67 per gram). </p>
<p><a href="https://alansfactoryoutlet.com/how-much-do-elements-cost-the-price-of-75-elements-per-kilogram/">Seven radioactive elements</a> are extremely rare in nature and so difficult to create in the lab that they eclipse the price of NASA’s Mars Sample Return. Polonium-209, the most expensive of these, costs $1.4 trillion per ounce ($49 billion per gram).</p>
<p>Gemstones can be expensive, too. <a href="https://www.gemsociety.org/article/emerald-jewelry-and-gemstone-information/">High-quality emeralds</a> are 10 times the <a href="https://goldprice.org/">price of gold</a>, and <a href="https://ajediam.com/diamond-prices/white-natural-diamond/">white diamonds</a> are 100 times the price of gold. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/554101/original/file-20231016-15-63z3ek.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A circular white diamond sitting on a white surface." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/554101/original/file-20231016-15-63z3ek.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/554101/original/file-20231016-15-63z3ek.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=727&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/554101/original/file-20231016-15-63z3ek.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=727&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/554101/original/file-20231016-15-63z3ek.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=727&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/554101/original/file-20231016-15-63z3ek.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=914&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/554101/original/file-20231016-15-63z3ek.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=914&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/554101/original/file-20231016-15-63z3ek.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=914&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">High-quality white diamonds can cost millions of dollars.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/eeaab33d812a487ebfd2e5a76a25eb03?ext=true">AP Photo/Mary Altaffer</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Some diamonds have a boron impurity that gives them a <a href="https://www.diamonds.pro/education/blue/">vivid blue hue</a>. They’re found in only a handful of mines worldwide, and at <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2022/04/28/worlds-largest-blue-diamond-sells/9567999002/">$550 million per ounce</a> ($19 million per gram) they rival the cost of the upcoming Mars samples – an ounce is 142 carats, but very few gems are that large. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-create-world-s-most-expensive-material-valued-at-145-million-per-gram">most expensive synthetic material</a> is a tiny spherical “cage” of carbon with a nitrogen atom trapped inside. The atom inside the cage is extremely stable, so can be used for timekeeping. <a href="https://arstechnica.com/science/2015/12/oxford-company-now-selling-endohedral-fullerenes-priced-at-110-million-per-gram/">Endohedral fullerenes</a> are made of carbon material that may be used to create extremely accurate atomic clocks. They can cost $4 billion per ounce ($141 million per gram).</p>
<h2>Most expensive of all</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.livescience.com/32387-what-is-antimatter.html">Antimatter</a> occurs in nature, but it’s exceptionally rare because any time an antiparticle is created it quickly annihilates with a particle and produces radiation. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/7MkfMGzMcf8?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">At CERN’s ‘antimatter factory,’ scientists create antimatter in very small quantities.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The <a href="https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsta.2010.0026">particle accelerator at CERN</a> can produces 10 million antiprotons per minute. That sounds like a lot, but <a href="https://archive.ph/6RUrA">at that rate</a> it would take billions of years and cost a billion billion (10<sup>18</sup>) dollars to generate an ounce (3.5 x 10<sup>16</sup> dollars per gram). </p>
<p><a href="https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg24232342-600-how-star-treks-warp-drives-touch-on-one-of-physics-biggest-mysteries/">Warp drives</a> as envisaged by “Star Trek,” which are powered by matter-antimatter annihilation, will have to wait.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/214614/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Chris Impey receives funding from the National Science Foundation. </span></em></p>Some space rocks you can get for free – if you know how to identify them. Rarer materials cost more, and the asteroid sample NASA just brought back has a high price tag.Chris Impey, University Distinguished Professor of Astronomy, University of ArizonaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2120192023-09-19T20:08:47Z2023-09-19T20:08:47ZMost pink diamonds were birthed by a disintegrating supercontinent. Where can we find more?<p>There is nothing quite like a diamond. For many they are the ultimate “I love you” gift, and jewellers will tell you the ultra-hard stones have unmatched “fire” and “brilliance”. The sentimental and aesthetic value of the gems is matched by their price, which can run to tens of thousand dollars per carat – and even more for coloured diamonds, especially if they are blue, green, violet, orange, red or pink.</p>
<p>But why are diamonds so expensive? How do they form? Do we really find diamonds in volcanoes? What is the link to supercontinents and ancient lifeforms? </p>
<p>In <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-023-40904-8">new research</a> published in Nature Communications, we answer some of these questions by studying the world’s largest diamond deposit, Argyle in Western Australia, the source of more than 90% of pink diamonds.</p>
<p>We found that at Argyle, diamonds crystallised deep in Earth’s interior were brought to the surface when a supercontinent, Nuna, began to break apart. As continents break up, their edges stretch, allowing small pockets of diamond-rich magma to rise to the surface.</p>
<h2>Why are pink diamonds so special?</h2>
<p>Only about 20% of mined diamonds are of gemstone quality. If you think of diamonds as cars, 80 of every 100 on the road would be old, beat-up rides and 20 would be luxury cars. </p>
<p>One in every 10,000 would be the equivalent of a supercar: a rare and precious coloured diamond.</p>
<p>However, some places in the world are special. Just as you might see a greater proportion of supercars in Monaco or Hollywood, so too do some places produce more coloured diamonds. </p>
<p>When it comes to pink diamonds, one place stands alone. More than 90% of all the pink diamonds ever found come from a single mine in the Kimberley region of Western Australia: Argyle.</p>
<p>The Argyle mine closed in 2020, and the price of pink diamonds has skyrocketed while the supply dwindles.</p>
<p>While pink diamonds are highly prized, they are also in a sense “damaged goods”.</p>
<p>Diamonds are made of carbon atoms arranged in a compact, regular lattice. Clear, perfect diamonds sparkle because light reflects off their internal surfaces. </p>
<p>However, when diamonds are subject to intense pressure deep inside Earth, the lattice of atoms can twist and bend. This causes small imperfections that diffract light and bring colour to the gem. </p>
<h2>Why is Argyle so well-endowed in pink diamonds?</h2>
<p>All diamonds are found in pipelike volcanoes, or in their eroded remnants. These volcanoes have deep roots under continents, which is where diamonds reside.</p>
<p>The roots need to be deep. If they’re shallow, the carbon that might become diamonds will instead be in the form of graphite, which is not nearly as appealing on an engagement ring.</p>
<p>The story of the Argyle volcano begins some 1,800 million years ago, when the continental plate beneath the Kimberley smashed into the rest of WA to form the first supercontinent, Nuna. Five hundred million years later, Nuna ripped apart again while Australia hung together. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/545152/original/file-20230829-28-61r2sk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Three maps of the world at different times, showing the creation of the volcano that led tot he Argyle diamond deposit." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/545152/original/file-20230829-28-61r2sk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/545152/original/file-20230829-28-61r2sk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=263&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/545152/original/file-20230829-28-61r2sk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=263&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/545152/original/file-20230829-28-61r2sk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=263&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/545152/original/file-20230829-28-61r2sk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=331&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/545152/original/file-20230829-28-61r2sk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=331&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/545152/original/file-20230829-28-61r2sk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=331&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Argyle volcano was created when the Nuna supercontinent was torn apart.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-023-40904-8">Olierook et al. / Nature Communications</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Yet old wounds never fully heal. The suture between the Kimberley and the rest of the continent was stretched open as Nuna split up, and the Argyle volcano shot to the surface, bringing pink diamonds with it. The death of a supercontinent gave birth to Argyle. </p>
<p>So what made Argyle’s diamonds pink? The force that damaged the deep diamonds, resulting in their beautiful hue, probably came from the continental collision that formed the supercontinent in the first place. But the diamonds remained deep below this old wound for a long time before being brought to the surface.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/perfectly-imperfect-the-discovery-of-the-second-largest-pink-diamond-has-left-the-world-in-awe-what-gives-diamonds-their-colour-187852">Perfectly imperfect: the discovery of the second-largest pink diamond has left the world in awe. What gives diamonds their colour?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Will we find another trove of pink diamonds? With Argyle now closed, the search is on to meet the demand for these illustrious gems. </p>
<p>The ingredients appear to be continental breakup, the edges of ancient continents and volcanic pipes. </p>
<h2>Is carbon recycled in Earth’s interior?</h2>
<p>Finding diamonds is no mere quest for glitz and glamour. It’s an exploration of Earth’s deepest history. </p>
<p>Diamonds are ancient time capsules from the depths of our planet. They are relics of a past so remote it challenges comprehension.</p>
<p>We know they are made of pure carbon – but where did this carbon come from?</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/more-than-just-a-sparkling-gem-what-you-didnt-know-about-diamonds-101115">More than just a sparkling gem: what you didn't know about diamonds</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Most of the carbon is remnants of carbon-rich asteroids that clumped together to form Earth 4.5 billion years ago. </p>
<p>However, some diamonds contain carbon that was once part of living organisms. Organic carbon, from organisms that once thrived on Earth’s surface, got buried deep down by geological processes. </p>
<p>The Argyle diamonds, for instance, hold such organic imprints, like echoes from an ancient world long vanished. In these glimmers of the distant past, we find more than beauty; we find keys to unlock the most profound secrets of our planet’s history.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/212019/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Denis Fougerouse receives funding from The Mineral Research Institute of Western Australia. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Hugo Olierook receives funding from various minerals industry partners and the Australian Research Council. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Luc Doucet receives funding from the Australian Research Council and China University of Geoscience, Wuhan. </span></em></p>More than 90% of the world’s pink diamonds came from a single mine that closed in 2020. Geologists are only now beginning to understand the forces that create the rare, highly prized gems.Denis Fougerouse, Research Fellow, School of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Curtin UniversityHugo Olierook, Research Fellow in Geology, Curtin UniversityLuc Doucet, ARC Future Fellow at the Earth Dynamics Research Group, Curtin UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2104212023-07-26T16:51:04Z2023-07-26T16:51:04ZWe’ve discovered how diamonds make their way to the surface and it may tell us where to find them<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539502/original/file-20230726-21-jcon90.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=17%2C0%2C5773%2C3820&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/natural-diamond-nestled-kimberlite-1608584494">Bjoern Wylezich / Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>“A diamond is forever.” That iconic slogan, coined for a <a href="https://www.thedrum.com/news/2016/03/31/1948-de-beers-diamond-forever-campaign-invents-the-modern-day-engagement-ring">highly successful advertising campaign in the 1940s</a>, sold the gemstones as a symbol of eternal commitment and unity. </p>
<p>But our new research, carried out by researchers in a variety of countries and <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06193-3">published in Nature</a>, suggests that diamonds may be a sign of break up too – of Earth’s tectonic plates, that is. It may even provide clues to where is best to go looking for them. </p>
<p>Diamonds, being the <a href="https://pursuit.unimelb.edu.au/articles/diamonds-the-hard-facts">hardest naturally-occurring stones</a>, require intense pressures and temperatures to form. These conditions are only achieved deep within the Earth. So how do they get from deep within the Earth, up to the surface? </p>
<p>Diamonds are carried up in molten rocks, or magmas, called <a href="https://www.britannica.com/science/kimberlite">kimberlites</a>. Until now, we didn’t know what process caused kimberlites to suddenly shoot through the Earth’s crust having spent millions, or even billions, of years stowed away under the continents.</p>
<h2>Supercontinent cycles</h2>
<p>Most geologists agree that the explosive eruptions that unleash <a href="https://www.science.org/doi/abs/10.1126/science.1206275">diamonds happen in sync</a> with the supercontinent cycle: a recurring pattern of landmass formation and fragmentation that has defined billions of years of Earth’s history. </p>
<p>However, the exact mechanisms underlying this relationship are debated. Two main theories have emerged. </p>
<p>One proposes that kimberlite magmas <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0024493709002758">exploit the “wounds”</a> created when the Earth’s crust is stretched or when the slabs of solid rock covering the Earth – known as tectonic plates – split up. The other theory <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-13871-2#:%7E:text=Using%20inferences%20from%20older%2C%20smooth,dense%20lower%20lithosphere%2C%20so%20that">involves mantle plumes</a>, colossal upwellings of molten rock from the core-mantle boundary, located about 2,900km beneath the Earth’s surface.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Structure of the Earth." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539551/original/file-20230726-21-tgwt8l.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539551/original/file-20230726-21-tgwt8l.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=418&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539551/original/file-20230726-21-tgwt8l.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=418&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539551/original/file-20230726-21-tgwt8l.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=418&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539551/original/file-20230726-21-tgwt8l.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=526&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539551/original/file-20230726-21-tgwt8l.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=526&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539551/original/file-20230726-21-tgwt8l.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=526&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A representation of the internal structure of the Earth.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.usgs.gov/media/images/earth-cross-section">USGS</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Both ideas, however, are not without their problems. Firstly, the main part of the tectonic plate, <a href="https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/lithosphere/">known as the lithosphere</a>, is incredibly strong and stable. This makes it difficult for fractures to penetrate, enabling magmas to flush through. </p>
<p>In addition, many kimberlites don’t display the chemical “flavours” we’d expect to find in rocks derived from mantle plumes.</p>
<p>In contrast, kimberlite formation is thought to involve exceedingly low degrees of mantle rock melting, often less than 1%. So, another mechanism is needed. Our study offers a possible resolution to this longstanding conundrum.</p>
<p>We deployed statistical analysis, including machine learning – an application of artificial intelligence (AI) – to forensically examine the link between continental breakup and kimberlite volcanism. The results of our global study showed the eruptions of most kimberlite volcanoes occurred 20 to 30 million years after the tectonic breakup of Earth’s continents. </p>
<p>Furthermore, our regional study targeting the three continents where most kimberlites are found – Africa, South America and North America – supported this finding. It also added a major clue: kimberlite eruptions tend to gradually migrate from the continental edges to the interiors over time at a rate that is uniform across the continents.</p>
<p>This begs the question: what geological process could explain these patterns?
To address this question, we employed multiple computer models to capture the complex behaviour of continents as they experience stretching, alongside the convective movements within the underlying mantle.</p>
<h2>Domino effect</h2>
<p>We propose that a domino effect can explain how breakup of the continents eventually leads to formation of kimberlite magma. During <a href="https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2022/egusphere-2022-139/">rifting</a>, a small region of the continental root – areas of thick rock located under some continents – is disrupted and sinks into the underlying mantle. </p>
<p>Here, we get sinking of colder material and upwelling of hot mantle, causing a process called <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0012821X98000892">edge-driven convection</a>. Our models show that this convection triggers a chain of similar flow patterns that migrate beneath the nearby continent. </p>
<p>Our models show that while sweeping along the continental root, these disruptive flows remove a substantial amount of rock, tens of kilometres thick, from the base of the continental plate. </p>
<p>Various other results from our computer models then advance to show that this process can bring together the necessary ingredients in the right amounts to trigger just enough melting to generate gas-rich kimberlites. Once formed, and with great buoyancy provided by carbon dioxide and water, the magma can rise rapidly to the surface carrying its precious cargo. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Eruption on western vent in Halema‘uma‘u crater, at the summit of Kīlauea." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539520/original/file-20230726-19-y5r0d0.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539520/original/file-20230726-19-y5r0d0.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539520/original/file-20230726-19-y5r0d0.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539520/original/file-20230726-19-y5r0d0.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539520/original/file-20230726-19-y5r0d0.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539520/original/file-20230726-19-y5r0d0.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539520/original/file-20230726-19-y5r0d0.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">It hasn’t been clear how the molten rock carrying diamonds got to the surface from deep within the Earth.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.usgs.gov/media/images/close-view-west-vent-halemaumau-kilauea-october-5-2021">N. Deligne / USGS</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Finding new diamond deposits</h2>
<p>This model doesn’t contradict the spatial association between kimberlites and mantle plumes. On the contrary, the breakup of tectonic plates may or may not result from the warming, thinning and weakening of the plate caused by plumes. </p>
<p>However, our research clearly shows that the spatial, time-based and chemical patterns observed in most kimberlite-rich regions can’t be adequately explained solely by the presence of plumes.</p>
<p>The processes triggering the eruptions that bring diamonds to the surface appear to be highly systematic. They start on the edges of continents and migrate towards the interior at a relatively uniform rate.</p>
<p>This information could be used to identify the possible locations and timings of past volcanic eruptions tied to this process, offering insights that could enable the discovery of diamond deposits and other rare elements needed for the green energy transition. </p>
<p>If we are to look for new deposits, it’s worth bearing in mind that there are currently efforts by campaign groups to try to eliminate from world markets those diamonds that are <a href="https://fpi.ec.europa.eu/what-we-do/kimberley-process-fight-against-conflict-diamonds_en">used to fund wars</a> (conflict diamonds) or those coming from mines with poor conditions for workers.</p>
<p>Diamonds may or may not be forever, but our work shows that new ones have been repeatedly created over long periods in the history of our planet.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/210421/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Thomas Gernon receives funding from the WoodNext Foundation and the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC). </span></em></p>Scientists were not previously certain how the precious stones arrived at the Earth’s surface.Thomas Gernon, Associate Professor in Earth Science, University of SouthamptonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2061362023-06-18T11:19:56Z2023-06-18T11:19:56ZGold fraud: the Goldenberg scam that cost Kenya billions of dollars in the 1990s – and no one was jailed<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/528027/original/file-20230524-15-ipamm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>The <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2006/mar/16/kenya.jeevanvasagar">Goldenberg scandal</a> in the early 1990s is Kenya’s largest documented gold fraud. The scheme involved Goldenberg International Limited, which pretended to export gold and diamonds, and in exchange received substantial subsidies from the government for “earning” foreign exchange. Kenyan businessman Kamlesh Pattni – who was at the centre of the scandal and was charged with fraud but <a href="https://www.businessdailyafrica.com/bd/economy/court-formally-terminates-goldenberg-case-2031264">eventually acquitted</a> – was recently <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/3/23/gold-smuggler-pattni-kenya-zimbabwe">named</a> in a new investigation into gold fraud. This time his operation is allegedly being run through Zimbabwe from his base in Dubai. Economists Roman Grynberg and Fwasa Singogo, who have <a href="https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/304991797.pdf">researched</a> the Goldenberg case, and <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Fwasa-Singogo-2">the gold mining industry and its role in illicit financial flows in Africa</a>, unpack the issue.</em></p>
<h2>What was the Goldenberg scandal?</h2>
<p>The scandal centred on two companies: Goldenberg International and Exchange Bank Limited. Both were owned and directed by businessman <a href="http://kenyalaw.org/kl/fileadmin/CommissionReports/Report-of-the-Judicial-Commission-of-Inquiry-into-the-Goldenberg-Affair.pdf#page=32">Kamlesh Pattni</a> and his partner James Kanyotu, the director of intelligence in the Kenyan police force. The two were licensed by the government to export gold and diamonds from Kenya. But they did not. They just collected an inflated subsidy.</p>
<p>The Goldenberg scandal occurred at a time of <a href="https://www.elibrary.imf.org/view/journals/002/1995/133/article-A001-en.xml">severe economic austerity</a> in Kenya in the early 1990s. The country’s economy was characterised by long periods of macroeconomic instability and dwindling foreign reserves. </p>
<p>Economic policy was inward-looking. It leaned towards the protection of local industries and the retention of foreign exchange. This period also coincided with the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Kenya-African-National-Union">one-party state that began in 1982</a> and was marked by political oppression. </p>
<p>As a result, donors gradually reduced support and investment evaporated. Foreign debt payments became irregular and the government increasingly fell back on local borrowing. </p>
<p>The Kenyan government turned to international financial institutions for cheaper loans. These were provided, but were conditional on <a href="https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/304991797.pdf#page=2">economic reforms</a>, such as measures intended to stimulate trade. </p>
<p>Coincidentally, or otherwise, Goldenberg International applied to the Kenyan government in <a href="http://kenyalaw.org/kl/fileadmin/CommissionReports/Report-of-the-Judicial-Commission-of-Inquiry-into-the-Goldenberg-Affair.pdf#page=33">July 1990</a> for certain privileges that spoke directly to the economic needs of the country. The company received a monopoly on exports of gold and diamonds from Kenya. </p>
<p>It was also given a subsidy of 35% of the value of these exports – 15% more than the official rate at the time. </p>
<p>Goldenberg managed to defraud the Kenyan state of between <a href="https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/304991797.pdf#page=1">US$600 million and US$1.5 billion</a> in <a href="https://www.wto.org/english/res_e/booksp_e/anrep_e/wtr06-2b_e.pdf#page=1">subsidies</a>. Subsidies can be direct (such as cash payments) or indirect (such as tax breaks). Goldenberg’s subsidy was in monetary form, on condition that the company proved foreign exchange gains through exporting non-traditional commodities. </p>
<p>The fraud was that Kenya had <a href="http://kenyalaw.org/kl/fileadmin/CommissionReports/Report-of-the-Judicial-Commission-of-Inquiry-into-the-Goldenberg-Affair.pdf#page=44">insignificant amounts of known gold deposits and absolutely no diamonds</a>. Government officials authorised payments for fictitious exports.</p>
<p>Goldenberg’s main transactions were recorded between <a href="https://issafrica.s3.amazonaws.com/site/uploads/Paper117.pdf#page=1">1991 and 1993</a>. The <a href="http://kenyalaw.org/kl/fileadmin/CommissionReports/Report-of-the-Judicial-Commission-of-Inquiry-into-the-Goldenberg-Affair.pdf#page=312">2003 Judicial Commission of Inquiry</a> into the scandal estimated that Goldenberg pilfered a <a href="http://kenyalaw.org/kl/fileadmin/CommissionReports/Report-of-the-Judicial-Commission-of-Inquiry-into-the-Goldenberg-Affair.pdf#page=379">total of KSh158.3 billion</a> (US$2.3 billion at the time). However, the exact amount remains in the area of speculation. </p>
<h2>What institutional gaps enabled the fraud?</h2>
<p>The architects of the Goldenberg scandal abused a number of <a href="http://kenyalaw.org/kl/fileadmin/CommissionReports/Report-of-the-Judicial-Commission-of-Inquiry-into-the-Goldenberg-Affair.pdf#page=32">trade policies</a>. These included the <a href="http://kenyalaw.org:8181/exist/kenyalex/actview.xql?actid=CAP.%20482">Export Compensation Act</a>, <a href="http://supplychainfinanceforum.org/techniques/pre-shipment-finance/">Pre-shipment Finance</a> and the Retention Scheme.</p>
<p>There’s inherently nothing wrong with these measures, which are intended to stimulate trade. But they were implemented in the context of a corrupt political system and became <a href="http://kenyalaw.org/kl/fileadmin/CommissionReports/Report-of-the-Judicial-Commission-of-Inquiry-into-the-Goldenberg-Affair.pdf#page=364">instruments of fraud</a>.</p>
<p>Another significant aspect of the fraud was Kenya’s exchange rate system. The difference between official and parallel exchange rates, and the depreciating Kenyan shilling, allowed Goldenberg to earn illegal returns on foreign exchange. </p>
<p><a href="http://kenyalaw.org/kl/fileadmin/CommissionReports/Report-of-the-Judicial-Commission-of-Inquiry-into-the-Goldenberg-Affair.pdf#page=135">Cheque kiting</a> is another tool that was used. It’s a form of cheque fraud that utilises the time it takes for a cheque to clear to use non-existent money in an account. </p>
<p>Officials at the highest levels of government were heavily involved in authorising payments to Goldenberg. </p>
<p>Under the rules to obtain subsidies, Goldenberg had to get signatories from the customs department that exports had occurred; from the Central Bank of Kenya that revenue had arrived; from the ministry of minerals that production had occurred; and from the ministry of finance for final authorisation. </p>
<p>As was alleged in a recent <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/4/14/six-secrets-uncovered-by-al-jazeeras-gold-mafia-investigation">Al-Jazeera exposé on gold fraud in Zimbabwe</a>, where Pattni’s name has featured, corrupt and well-paid senior government officials in Kenya played a part in the plunder of the nation during the Goldenberg years. </p>
<p>An audit ordered by the International Monetary Fund and World Bank into cheque kiting and forex fraud <a href="https://issafrica.s3.amazonaws.com/site/uploads/Paper117.pdf#page=9">in April 1993</a> sparked the unravelling of the Goldenberg scandal.</p>
<p>No one ever went to jail for this grand fraud despite <a href="http://kenyalaw.org/kl/fileadmin/CommissionReports/Report-of-the-Judicial-Commission-of-Inquiry-into-the-Goldenberg-Affair.pdf">years of inquiry</a> and the <a href="https://www.businessdailyafrica.com/bd/economy/court-formally-terminates-goldenberg-case-2031264">prosecution of some of the parties involved</a>. </p>
<h2>What was the cost to Kenya?</h2>
<p>The government of Kenya received no benefit as there were no official export earnings from the sale of gold and diamonds. </p>
<p>There are no reliable estimates as to the scandal’s effect on Kenyans to date, largely because the payments made and money siphoned <a href="https://www.standardmedia.co.ke/article/2000065911/goldenberg-scandal-still-a-mystery-decades-later">couldn’t be easily accounted for</a>.</p>
<h2>What are the lessons learned?</h2>
<p>The judges in the judicial review of the Goldenberg scandal blamed the International Monetary Fund and World Bank for setting the <a href="https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/esaf/exr/">context</a> that enabled the abuse of subsidies.</p>
<p>In a world where more people and nations are subject to sanctions if they trade in US dollars, <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/4/14/six-secrets-uncovered-by-al-jazeeras-gold-mafia-investigation">gold</a> has become a way to evade economic restrictions. It isn’t easily detected in developed country jurisdictions. For instance, since 2019, trade in gold in <a href="https://ahvalnews-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/ahvalnews.com/node/36566?amp">Venezuela</a> and <a href="https://financialtribune.com/articles/domestic-economy/98593/77-rise-in-irans-non-oil-trade-with-turkey">Iran</a> has increased drastically with Turkey despite US sanctions. </p>
<p>The use of physical gold traded through a country like the United Arab Emirates – Pattni now operates out of Dubai – evades the financial sanctions imposed on nations like Zimbabwe. </p>
<p>Regulatory frameworks governing trade in gold are weaker than the ones governing the entry of US dollars into the global banking system. To address this, the international community must put pressure on <a href="https://taxjustice.net/faq/what-is-a-secrecy-jurisdiction/">secrecy jurisdictions</a> to align their gold trade and anti-money laundering regulatory frameworks with global best practices. </p>
<p>Both Kenya and Zimbabwe have had long reputations of being politically risky, mired in corruption and having unsound policies. Political connections are also important in doing business. </p>
<p>Deliberate and continuous efforts to curb corruption, have stable and sound policies, and establish solid independent institutions are needed for these countries to have some semblance of accountability. If not curbed, the systemic greed of the political elite and those politically connected will continue to lead countries into ruin and citizens to destitution. Competing limited resources will continue to end up in the pockets of a select few and not cater to the public good so often championed in policy pronouncements.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/206136/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>In a world where economic sanctions make trade in US dollars almost impossible, gold has offered a way to evade these restrictions.Roman Grynberg, Adjunct Professor, Griffith UniversityFwasa K Singogo, Research Associate, Indaba Agricultural Policy Research Institute (IAPRI)Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2055972023-05-18T11:32:43Z2023-05-18T11:32:43ZSouth African diamonds adorn the crown of King Charles – why they’re unlikely to be returned<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/526284/original/file-20230515-25052-37h69q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">King Charles III And Queen Camilla on their coronation day.
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Christopher Furlong/Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ar7HGBg5o3k">Opera singer Pretty Yende</a> and foreign minister <a href="https://twitter.com/DIRCO_ZA/status/1654841605726040064?lang=en">Naledi Pandor</a> were not the only South African presence at the coronation of King Charles III. Also there were the stones cut from the <a href="https://www.rct.uk/collection/themes/trails/the-crown-jewels/the-cullinan-diamond">Cullinan diamond</a>, the largest gem-quality rough diamond ever found.</p>
<p>The Cullinan, named after Thomas Cullinan, the chairman of the mining company that found it in South Africa, <a href="https://www.capetowndiamondmuseum.org/blog/2017/01/worlds-largest-diamond-the-cullinan/">was mined in 1905</a> and was bought by the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Transvaal">Transvaal</a> colony’s government for presentation to King Edward VII in 1907. It was cut into <a href="https://www.rct.uk/collection/themes/trails/the-crown-jewels/cullinan-diamond-cleaving-of-the-second-largest-portion">nine stones</a> and another 97 fragments.</p>
<p>The largest of these, Cullinan 1, known as the Star of Africa, was set at the top of the sceptre presented to Charles during the coronation ceremony. Cullinan 2 is set in the front of the crown he wore. Other stones are in the possession of Britain’s royal family too or on display in the Tower of London.</p>
<p>The coronation has led to renewed calls for the return of the stones to South Africa. These calls are part of the growing demands by former colonial people for the return of the cultural artefacts removed from their countries by colonial powers.</p>
<p>What are the justifications for the return of the Cullinan diamonds? What are the complications? And what is the likelihood of return?</p>
<h2>The justification</h2>
<p>Prior to the coronation, there were calls for the return of the diamonds to South Africa. The Economic Freedom Fighters, the country’s third largest political party, led in <a href="https://www.politicsweb.co.za/politics/stolen-star-of-africa-still-flaunted-by-british-11">calling for them to come home</a>. And so has African Transformation Movement’s member of parliament, <a href="https://www.voaafrica.com/a/s-africa-wants-buckingham-bling-returned/7078534.html">Vuyolwethu Zungula</a>. In similar fashion, <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2023/05/05/africa/star-of-africa-diamond-intl/index.html">Mothusi Kamanga</a>, a Johannesburg lawyer and activist, promoted an online petition for the diamonds to be returned. It quickly attracted 8,000 signatures. </p>
<p>These demands fall under a much wider global <a href="https://theconversation.com/restitution-of-looted-african-art-just-continues-colonial-policies-much-more-is-at-stake-191386">conversation</a> about reparations for items forcefully appropriated as spoils of war and cultural domination. <a href="https://learningenglish.voanews.com/a/africa-sees-some-artifacts-returned-seeks-many-more/6685846.html">Various items</a> have been <a href="https://theconversation.com/germany-is-returning-nigerias-looted-benin-bronzes-why-its-not-nearly-enough-165349">returned</a> to their countries of origin by European universities, museums and other bodies which had acquired them over decades past.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/patrice-lumumbas-tooth-represents-plunder-resilience-and-reparation-186241">Patrice Lumumba’s tooth represents plunder, resilience and reparation</a>
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<p>Activists view their moral case for the return of the diamonds as unanswerable, but it runs up against many complications.</p>
<h2>Complications: ‘given’ not ‘looted’</h2>
<p>Let’s go back to 1907, when <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/louis-botha">Louis Botha</a> was prime minister of the Transvaal, one of the two <a href="https://blogs.loc.gov/maps/2018/06/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-orange-free-state-and-transvaal-in-southern-africa/">Boer Republics</a> which had been defeated by Britain in the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/second-anglo-boer-war-1899-1902">South African War, 1899-1902</a>, but to which <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Louis-Botha">“self-government” had now been returned</a>. Botha now suggested buying the Cullinan diamond for Edward VII as <a href="https://www.capetowndiamondmuseum.org/about-diamonds/famous-diamonds/">a token</a> of the loyalty of the people of the Transvaal to the king. </p>
<p>At face value, this is odd, because Botha had served as a Boer general in the South African War, which had culminated in Boer defeat, but only after a drawn out struggle which had left South Africa devastated. </p>
<p>About 14,000 Boer troops had lost their lives, and some 28,000 Boer men, women and children died in <a href="https://theconversation.com/concentration-camps-in-the-south-african-war-here-are-the-real-facts-112006">concentration camps</a>, incarcerated by the British to stop them from helping the Boer’s guerrilla forces. Yet Botha refers to the “loyalty and attachment” of the Transvaal “people” (by which he almost certainly meant only white people). </p>
<p>After the war, Botha teamed up with <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/18/opinion/jan-smuts-south-africa.html">Jan Smuts</a>, another former Boer general. Smuts was instrumental in arguing the case in London for the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jan-Smuts">return of self-government</a> to the former Boer republic of the Transvaal, which after its defeat had been transformed into a colony. </p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/benin-bronzes-what-is-the-significance-of-their-repatriation-to-nigeria-171444">Benin bronzes: What is the significance of their repatriation to Nigeria?</a>
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<p>White settler regimes were regarded as troublesome by <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Whitehall-Palace">Whitehall</a>, which was pleased to get rid of them. But self-government was not independence. Britain remained largely in control of foreign policy, and importantly, could declare its <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/dominion-British-Commonwealth">“dominions”</a> (as these self-governing territories were termed) as at war if Britain was dragged into an armed conflict. </p>
<p>Both these former Boer generals were realists. They recognised the realities of Boer defeat and the ruin it had brought to South Africa. After the war they had come to preach a gospel of “conciliation”, whose rationale was to unite Boers and Britons into a single white nation, while repairing relations with Britain, whose aid they regarded as necessary for reconstruction. </p>
<p>They also had in mind the Transvaal as heading a drive for the making of a united South Africa – a long-held policy of Britain since the mid-19th century. In any case, Botha and Smuts regarded South Africa’s membership of the Empire and reliance on the British navy as necessary for its defence.</p>
<p>We may question why this persuaded Botha to offer a valuable diamond to the king. Perhaps it was merely gratitude for the grant of self governance. Perhaps it was one of the more spectacular acts of international brown-nosing, to secure Britain’s goodwill towards South Africa.</p>
<p>But in the present debate, it introduces the complication that legally speaking, the Cullinan diamonds were given by a forerunner government of South Africa, rather than having been “looted”.</p>
<h2>Likelihood of return</h2>
<p>Calls for the return of the diamonds, especially when not backed by any official request by the South African government, are unlikely to make any impression in London. Although King Charles has encouraged investigation into the way <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/apr/07/king-charles-urged-take-some-responsibility-royal-slavery-links">the monarchy has benefited from slavery</a>, his enthusiasm is unlikely to extend to the physical deconstruction of the crown jewels. </p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-the-west-is-morally-bound-to-offer-reparations-for-slavery-153544">Why the West is morally bound to offer reparations for slavery</a>
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<p>Such decisions would have to be made by the government of the day. Any thought of doing so would play into the hands of the right wing of the <a href="https://www.conservatives.com/">Conservative Party</a>, and its determination to provoke <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/feb/19/tories-migrants-fear-immigration-culture-war">“culture wars”</a> around whiteness and nationalism.</p>
<p>More fundamentally, former colonial powers are <a href="https://theconversation.com/has-the-relationship-between-namibia-and-germany-sunk-to-a-new-low-121329">wary of issuing apologies for sins past</a>, as taking responsibility for past crimes against humanity implies legal obligations to make reparations, and this they are determined to avoid.</p>
<p>Although Africans were never consulted, British governments are likely to insist that the Cullinan diamonds were not stolen but freely given by Louis Botha. If South Africa wants the diamonds back, it is going to have to put up a very determined fight.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/205597/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Roger Southall does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Activists view their moral case for the return of the diamonds as unanswerable, but it runs up against many complications.Roger Southall, Professor of Sociology, University of the WitwatersrandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2033922023-05-15T12:33:42Z2023-05-15T12:33:42ZWhy don’t rocks burn?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/523325/original/file-20230427-232-11japl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=44%2C0%2C5000%2C3308&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Jharia coal field in India has been on fire underground since 1916.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/in-the-village-liloripathra-that-is-located-on-the-top-of-news-photo/1227824345">Jonas Gratzer/LightRocket via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/281719/original/file-20190628-76743-26slbc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/281719/original/file-20190628-76743-26slbc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=293&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/281719/original/file-20190628-76743-26slbc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=293&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/281719/original/file-20190628-76743-26slbc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=293&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/281719/original/file-20190628-76743-26slbc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=368&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/281719/original/file-20190628-76743-26slbc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=368&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/281719/original/file-20190628-76743-26slbc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=368&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/us/topics/curious-kids-us-74795">Curious Kids</a> is a series for children of all ages. If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, send it to <a href="mailto:curiouskidsus@theconversation.com">curiouskidsus@theconversation.com</a>.</em></p>
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<blockquote>
<p>Why don’t rocks burn? – Luke, age 4, New Market, New Hampshire</p>
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<p>While many rocks don’t burn, some of them do. It depends on what the rocks are made of – and that’s related to how they were formed.</p>
<p>There are three main rock types: <a href="https://www.usgs.gov/faqs/what-are-igneous-rocks">igneous</a>, <a href="https://www.usgs.gov/faqs/what-are-sedimentary-rocks">sedimentary</a> and <a href="https://www.usgs.gov/faqs/what-are-metamorphic-rocks">metamorphic</a>. These rocks are made of minerals that all have different characteristics. Some will melt into <a href="https://www.usgs.gov/faqs/what-difference-between-magma-and-lava">magma or lava</a> – super-hot, liquid rock – when they are exposed to heat. Others will catch fire.</p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/7Bxw4kkeHJ8?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Rocks can look alike, but one rock is not like another.</span></figcaption>
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<p>Rocks that burn when they get heated up <a href="https://www.grc.nasa.gov/www/k-12/airplane/combst1.html">are combusting</a>. This means that elements within the rocks are reacting with oxygen in the air to produce heat and light, in the form of flames. </p>
<p>The elements <a href="https://www.rsc.org/periodic-table/element/16/sulfur">sulfur</a>, <a href="https://www.rsc.org/periodic-table/element/6/carbon">carbon</a> and <a href="https://www.rsc.org/periodic-table/element/1/hydrogen">hydrogen</a> easily react with oxygen. Rocks that contain these elements are combustible. Without these elements inside them, rocks that are exposed to enough heat will melt instead of catching fire.</p>
<h2>How rocks form</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.usgs.gov/faqs/what-are-igneous-rocks">Igneous rocks</a> are formed when magma underground or <a href="https://theconversation.com/curious-kids-how-can-we-tell-when-a-volcano-is-going-to-erupt-147703">lava from a volcano</a> cools and crystallizes into solid material. These rocks are mostly made of <a href="https://www.britannica.com/science/silicate-mineral">silicate minerals</a> that crystallize at temperatures from 1,300 degrees Fahrenheit (700 degrees Celsius) up to <a href="https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/magma-role-rock-cycle/">as high as 2,400 F (1,300 C)</a>.</p>
<p>Igneous rocks contain few or no combustible elements. And it’s very hard to remelt them back into magma because they crystallize at such high temperatures – it would take the kind of <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-cant-we-throw-all-our-trash-into-a-volcano-and-burn-it-up-170919">high-tech incinerator that cities use to burn waste</a> to make that happen.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.usgs.gov/faqs/what-are-sedimentary-rocks">Sedimentary rocks</a> have a very different formation story. They form from broken bits of rocks, minerals, sometimes plant or animal material, and also crystals left behind when water evaporates, like the <a href="https://www.compoundchem.com/2016/03/02/limescale/">limescale</a> that forms in teakettles and bathtubs. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/523326/original/file-20230427-14-w7d3zk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Infographic showing materials washing into the ocean and becoming compressed at depth." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/523326/original/file-20230427-14-w7d3zk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/523326/original/file-20230427-14-w7d3zk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=423&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523326/original/file-20230427-14-w7d3zk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=423&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523326/original/file-20230427-14-w7d3zk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=423&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523326/original/file-20230427-14-w7d3zk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=531&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523326/original/file-20230427-14-w7d3zk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=531&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523326/original/file-20230427-14-w7d3zk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=531&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Sedimentary rock forms when layers of material are compressed over time, either on land or under water.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://flic.kr/p/mGbBa2">Siyavula Education/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>There is a lot of <a href="https://www.rsc.org/periodic-table/element/16/sulfur">sulfur</a>, <a href="https://www.rsc.org/periodic-table/element/6/carbon">carbon</a> and <a href="https://www.rsc.org/periodic-table/element/1/hydrogen">hydrogen</a> in living things. In fact, these are three of the <a href="https://www.livescience.com/32983-what-are-ingredients-life.html">six essential elements of life on Earth</a>. Bits of organic matter, particularly dead plants, also are combustible and allow the rocks to burn. </p>
<p>The last group of rocks is called <a href="https://www.usgs.gov/faqs/what-are-metamorphic-rocks">metamorphic</a>, because these rocks form when a lot of heat and pressure change existing rocks into new types without melting or burning them. “Metamorphosis” comes from ancient Greek and means “transformation.” For example, marble that you might see in kitchen counters or statues came from limestone that was transformed under intense heat and pressure deep underground. </p>
<h2>The rock that humans burn: Coal</h2>
<p>Metamorphic rocks that are formed from igneous rocks won’t contain the combustible elements – the ones that burn – but metamorphic rocks made from sedimentary rocks might. One familiar example is <a href="https://www.usgs.gov/faqs/what-are-types-coal">anthracite coal</a>, which is made almost entirely of carbon. It formed when dead plants fell into swamps long, long ago, were buried by sand or mud, and eventually were compressed over <a href="https://eartharchives.org/articles/the-evolution-of-plants-part-3-the-age-of-coal/index.html">hundreds of millions of years into coal</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/523327/original/file-20230427-2850-2212o2.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A large chunk of anthracite coal." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/523327/original/file-20230427-2850-2212o2.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/523327/original/file-20230427-2850-2212o2.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=901&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523327/original/file-20230427-2850-2212o2.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=901&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523327/original/file-20230427-2850-2212o2.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=901&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523327/original/file-20230427-2850-2212o2.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1132&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523327/original/file-20230427-2850-2212o2.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1132&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523327/original/file-20230427-2850-2212o2.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1132&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Anthracite is the hardest type of coal. It contains the most carbon and the fewest impurities of all coal types.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthracite#/media/File:Anthracite_chunk.JPG">Jakec/Wikipedia</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>There are many coal seams around the world. Sometimes the coal even <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/fire-in-the-hole-77895126/">catches fire while it’s still in the ground</a>. The cause can be natural, such as a lightning strike, or human activities like mining.</p>
<p>In Centralia, Pennsylvania, a former mining town, a coal seam has been <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/fire-in-the-hole-77895126/">burning for over 50 years</a>. There are other active coal seam fires in places around the world including <a href="https://eos.org/articles/coal-seam-fires-burn-beneath-communities-in-zimbabwe">Zimbabwe in Africa</a> and <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2015/12/02/indias-jharia-coal-field-has-been-burning-for-100-years.html">Jharia in India</a>.</p>
<p>If carbon is compressed with even more pressure than it takes to make coal, eventually <a href="https://theconversation.com/diamonds-are-forever-whether-made-in-a-lab-or-mined-from-the-earth-106665">you get diamonds</a> – the <a href="https://theconversation.com/have-scientists-really-found-something-harder-than-diamond-52391">hardest mineral found in nature</a>. In 1772, French chemist <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Antoine-Lavoisier">Antoine Lavoisier</a> proved that diamonds could combust when he <a href="https://www.wtamu.edu/%7Ecbaird/sq/2014/03/27/can-you-light-diamond-on-fire/">burned one with a magnifying glass</a>. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/1QbHRLpYc-0?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Scientists burn a diamond – the hardest mineral found in nature.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>With enough patience, you could <a href="https://www.wtamu.edu/%7Ecbaird/sq/2014/03/27/can-you-light-diamond-on-fire/">burn a diamond in a candle flame</a>. But since diamonds are quite expensive, it’s better to stick to <a href="https://gosciencegirls.com/magnifying-glass-fire/">burning other things made of carbon</a>, like <a href="https://gosciencekids.com/magnifying-glass-fire/">leaves under a magnifying glass</a>, or sticks and marshmallows in a campfire, instead. </p>
<hr>
<p><em>Hello, curious kids! Do you have a question you’d like an expert to answer? Ask an adult to send your question to <a href="mailto:curiouskidsus@theconversation.com">CuriousKidsUS@theconversation.com</a>. Please tell us your name, age and the city where you live.</em></p>
<p><em>And since curiosity has no age limit – adults, let us know what you’re wondering, too. We won’t be able to answer every question, but we will do our best.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/203392/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Natalie Bursztyn does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Some rocks will burn, and others will melt, depending on how they were formed and what minerals they contain.Natalie Bursztyn, Lecturer in Geosciences, University of MontanaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2049052023-05-08T20:11:01Z2023-05-08T20:11:01ZSupercomputers have revealed the giant ‘pillars of heat’ funnelling diamonds upwards from deep within Earth<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/524817/original/file-20230508-27-u0wox4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=32%2C24%2C5359%2C3564&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Most diamonds are formed deep inside Earth and brought close to the surface in small yet powerful volcanic eruptions of a kind of rock called “kimberlite”. </p>
<p>Our <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-023-01181-8">supercomputer modelling</a>, published in Nature Geoscience, shows these eruptions are fuelled by giant “pillars of heat” rooted 2,900 kilometres below ground, just above our planet’s core.</p>
<p>Understanding Earth’s internal history can be used to target mineral reserves – not only diamonds, but also crucial minerals such as nickel and rare earth elements. </p>
<h2>Kimberlite and hot blobs</h2>
<p>Kimberlite eruptions leave behind a characteristic deep, carrot-shaped “pipe” of kimberlite rock, which often contains diamonds. <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0012821X17307124">Hundreds of these eruptions</a> that occurred over the past 200 million years have been discovered around the world. Most of them were found in Canada (178 eruptions), South Africa (158), Angola (71) and Brazil (70).</p>
<p><iframe id="FbdgL" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/FbdgL/3/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p>Between Earth’s solid crust and molten core is the mantle, a thick layer of slightly goopy hot rock. For decades, geophysicists have used computers to study how the mantle slowly flows over long periods of time. </p>
<p>In the 1980s, <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0012821X84900438">one study showed</a> that kimberlite eruptions might be linked to small thermal plumes in the mantle – feather-like upward jets of hot mantle rising due to their higher buoyancy – beneath slowly moving continents. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/volcanoes-diamonds-and-blobs-a-billion-year-history-of-earths-interior-shows-its-more-mobile-than-we-thought-179673">Volcanoes, diamonds, and blobs: a billion-year history of Earth's interior shows it's more mobile than we thought</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>It had <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/230042a0">already been argued</a>, in the 1970s, that these plumes might originate from the boundary between the mantle and the core, at a depth of 2,900km.</p>
<p>Then, in 2010, <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/nature09216">geologists proposed</a> that kimberlite eruptions could be explained by thermal plumes arising from the edges of two deep, hot blobs anchored under Africa and the Pacific Ocean.</p>
<p>And last year, <a href="https://theconversation.com/volcanoes-diamonds-and-blobs-a-billion-year-history-of-earths-interior-shows-its-more-mobile-than-we-thought-179673">we reported that</a> these anchored blobs are more mobile than we thought.</p>
<p>However, we still didn’t know exactly how activity deep in the mantle was driving kimberlite eruptions.</p>
<h2>Pillars of heat</h2>
<p>Geologists assumed that mantle plumes could be responsible for igniting kimberlite eruptions. However, there was still a big question remaining: how was heat being transported from the deep Earth up to the kimberlites?</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/524728/original/file-20230506-35349-epn7ao.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/524728/original/file-20230506-35349-epn7ao.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=494&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524728/original/file-20230506-35349-epn7ao.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=494&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524728/original/file-20230506-35349-epn7ao.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=494&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524728/original/file-20230506-35349-epn7ao.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=621&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524728/original/file-20230506-35349-epn7ao.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=621&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524728/original/file-20230506-35349-epn7ao.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=621&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A snapshot of the global mantle convection model centred on subduction underneath the South American plate.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Ömer F. Bodur</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>To address this question, we used <a href="https://nci.org.au">supercomputers</a> in Canberra, Australia to create three-dimensional geodynamic models of Earth’s mantle. Our models account for the movement of continents on the surface and into the mantle over the past one billion years. </p>
<p>We calculated the movements of heat upward from the core and discovered that broad mantle upwellings, or “pillars of heat”, connect the very deep Earth to the surface. Our modelling shows these pillars supply heat underneath kimberlites, and they explain most kimberlite eruptions over the past 200 million years. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/524816/original/file-20230508-23-g6oon7.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/524816/original/file-20230508-23-g6oon7.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=303&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524816/original/file-20230508-23-g6oon7.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=303&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524816/original/file-20230508-23-g6oon7.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=303&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524816/original/file-20230508-23-g6oon7.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=381&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524816/original/file-20230508-23-g6oon7.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=381&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524816/original/file-20230508-23-g6oon7.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=381&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A schematic representation of Earth’s heat pillars and how they bring heat to kimberlites, based on output from our geodynamic model.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Ömer F. Bodur</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The model successfully captured kimberlite eruptions in Africa, Brazil, Russia and partly in the United States and Canada. Our models also predict previously undiscovered kimberlite eruptions occurred in East Antarctica and the Yilgarn Craton of Western Australia. </p>
<figure>
<iframe src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/824007338" width="500" height="281" frameborder="0" webkitallowfullscreen="" mozallowfullscreen="" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Earth’s “pillars of heat” in a global mantle convection model can be used to predict kimberlite eruptions. Credit: Ömer F. Bodur.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Towards the centre of the pillars, mantle plumes rise much faster and carry dense material across the mantle, which may explain chemical differences between kimberlites in <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-023-01181-8">different continents</a>.</p>
<p>Our models do not explain some of the kimberlites in Canada, which might be related to a different geological process called “plate subduction”. We have so far predicted kimberlites back to one billion years ago, which is the current limit of <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0012825220305237">reconstructions of tectonic plate movements</a>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/204905/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ömer Bodur was supported by funding from the Australian Research Council and from De Beers.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nicolas Flament receives funding from the Australian Research Council and from De Beers.</span></em></p>The volcanic eruptions that bring diamonds to Earth’s surface are driven by ‘pillars of heat’ stretching deep inside the planet.Ömer F. Bodur, Honorary Fellow, University of WollongongNicolas Flament, Associate Professor, University of WollongongLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2040002023-04-27T16:54:41Z2023-04-27T16:54:41ZWhat the Crown Jewels tell us about exploitation and the quest for reparations — Podcast<p>Although King Charles will have a low-key ceremony on his coronation day this May 6, the Crown Jewels will still figure prominently. An exploration of the story of the jewels tells a tale of brutal exploitation, rape and the original looting. Join us on <a href="https://dont-call-me-resilient.simplecast.com/episodes/coronation-day-what-the-story-of-the-crown-jewels-can-tell-us-about-exploitation-and-the-quest-for-reparations"><em>Don’t Call Me Resilient</em></a> to follow the jewels. </p>
<iframe height="200px" width="100%" frameborder="no" scrolling="no" seamless="" src="https://player.simplecast.com/772104f6-caa7-4803-a167-f6d0eec48d61?dark=true"></iframe>
<p>Much of what was called the British Empire was built from stolen riches — globally — and <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=776527">much of that was from India.</a> </p>
<p>In fact, India was such an abundant contributor to the Crown that at the time of its occupation of South Asia, Britain called India the Jewel in its Crown. </p>
<p>India was called this because of its location — easy access to the silk route, but mostly because of its vast human and natural resources: things like cotton, and tea and of course its abundance of jewels.</p>
<p>Literally, the brightest jewel in Britain’s Crown is the Koh-i-Noor diamond. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/523065/original/file-20230426-20-leoksy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/523065/original/file-20230426-20-leoksy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=466&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523065/original/file-20230426-20-leoksy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=466&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523065/original/file-20230426-20-leoksy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=466&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523065/original/file-20230426-20-leoksy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=586&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523065/original/file-20230426-20-leoksy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=586&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523065/original/file-20230426-20-leoksy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=586&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Nader Shah on the Peacock Throne, whose jewels included the Koh-i-Noor diamond.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It is considered one of the world’s largest and most valued diamonds and it usually sits on top of the Crown of Queen Mary.</p>
<p>It has a controversial history — namely that it was “surrendered” to the British by an Indian 10-year-old boy, Duleep Singh, whose mother had been imprisoned and whose father had recently died. It’s likely for that reason, that it won’t be on display at the coronation. But plenty of other jewels will be part of the ceremony. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/523154/original/file-20230427-28-yd7cfj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=47%2C41%2C3934%2C2907&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/523154/original/file-20230427-28-yd7cfj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523154/original/file-20230427-28-yd7cfj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523154/original/file-20230427-28-yd7cfj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523154/original/file-20230427-28-yd7cfj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=565&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523154/original/file-20230427-28-yd7cfj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=565&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523154/original/file-20230427-28-yd7cfj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=565&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Imperial State Crown on a cushion as it arrives for the State Opening of Parliament.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Kirsty Wigglesworth/AP)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>There is the five-pound gold St. Edward’s Crown that Charles will be officially crowned with, the Sovereign’s Sceptre, which has the Great Star of Africa diamond in it and the Imperial State Crown, which is set with almost 3,000 diamonds - including another Star of Africa.</p>
<p>Joining me to explore the history and meaning behind these jewels is Annie St. John-Stark, assistant professor of British history at Thompson Rivers University. Also here today is: Sharanjit Kaur Sandhra, instructor of history at both the University of the Fraser Valley and the University of British Columbia. Her newly minted PhD looks at how museums can grow to include voices previously left off the “official record.” </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/523151/original/file-20230427-26-vncuii.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/523151/original/file-20230427-26-vncuii.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=750&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523151/original/file-20230427-26-vncuii.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=750&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523151/original/file-20230427-26-vncuii.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=750&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523151/original/file-20230427-26-vncuii.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=942&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523151/original/file-20230427-26-vncuii.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=942&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523151/original/file-20230427-26-vncuii.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=942&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Queen Elizabeth II on her coronation day.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Although many will be out partying next weekend, the pomp of the coronation - along with its display of the Crown Jewels - does not reflect current day British attitudes. Only <a href="https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2023/04/14/first-coronation-what-then">32 per cent believe the Empire is something to be proud of</a> — that is down almost 25 per cent <a href="https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2014/07/26/britain-proud-its-empire">from 2014</a>. That means, attitudes are changing quickly. </p>
<p>Will the Royal Family catch up? </p>
<blockquote>
<p>It’s not just the jewels, it’s the pomp of everything that is attached to the ceremony is such a contradiction now to the things we are talking about globally in our world in terms of privilege, colonialism and class structures. - Sharanjit Kaur Sandhra</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/523149/original/file-20230427-308-yyopwc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/523149/original/file-20230427-308-yyopwc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523149/original/file-20230427-308-yyopwc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523149/original/file-20230427-308-yyopwc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523149/original/file-20230427-308-yyopwc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523149/original/file-20230427-308-yyopwc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523149/original/file-20230427-308-yyopwc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Union flags are raised to celebrate the upcoming coronation of King Charles, in central London, last week.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Kin Cheung)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Resources</h2>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/523150/original/file-20230427-18-r895dy.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/523150/original/file-20230427-18-r895dy.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523150/original/file-20230427-18-r895dy.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523150/original/file-20230427-18-r895dy.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523150/original/file-20230427-18-r895dy.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523150/original/file-20230427-18-r895dy.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523150/original/file-20230427-18-r895dy.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">This black and white photograph of Maharajah Duleep Singh, the last Indian owner of the Koh-i-Noor diamond was taken by Prince Albert in 1854 in England.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/ca/kohinoor-9781635570779/"><em>Koh-i-Noor: The History of the World’s Most Infamous Diamond</em> by Anita Anand, William Dalrymple</a> </p>
<p><a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/true-story-koh-i-noor-diamondand-why-british-wont-give-it-back-180964660/">The True Story of the Koh-i-Noor Diamond—and Why the British Won’t Give It Back (<em>Smithsonian Magazine</em>)</a></p>
<p><a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/25483040">Koh-i-Noor: Empire, Diamonds, and the Performance of British Material Culture by Danielle C. Kinsey</a></p>
<p><a href="https://www.cosmopolitan.com/entertainment/celebs/a43522648/what-crown-will-king-charles-wear/">What Crown will King Charles Wear? (<em>Cosmopolitan</em>)</a></p>
<p><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/apr/06/indian-archive-reveals-extent-of-colonial-loot-in-royal-jewellery-collection">Indian Archive Reveals Extent of Colonial Loot in Royal Jewellery Collection (<em>The Guardian</em>)</a></p>
<p><a href="https://www.saada.org/tides/article/the-ghadar-party">Ghadar Movement</a> </p>
<p><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/25/fashion/jewelry-ananya-malhotra-india-spirituality.html">Expressing Indian Spirituality in Jeweled Form (<em>New York Times</em>)</a> </p>
<p><a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2018/12/19/how-britain-stole-45-trillion-from-india">How Britain Stole 45 Trillion from India (<em>Al Jazeera</em>)</a></p>
<p><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/mar/04/east-india-company-original-corporate-raiders">The East India Company: The original corporate raiders (<em>The Guardian</em>)</a></p>
<p><a href="https://www.npr.org/2022/12/21/1144666811/germany-nigeria-returns-benin-bronzes-looted#:%7E:text=The%20Benin%20Bronzes%20are%20sculptures,their%20call%20in%20recent%20years.">Germany Returns Benin Bronzes (<em>NPR</em>)</a></p>
<p><a href="https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/316672/the-new-age-of-empire-by-andrews-kehinde/9780141992365"><em>The New Age of Empire: How Racism and Colonialism Still Rule the World</em> by Kehinde Andrews</a></p>
<h2>Read more in The Conversation</h2>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/king-charless-21st-century-coronation-repatriating-the-crown-jewels-is-long-overdue-204017">King Charles's 21st century coronation: Repatriating the Crown Jewels is long overdue</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/king-charless-coronation-how-the-place-of-britain-and-the-crown-has-shifted-in-canadian-schooling-204073">King Charles's coronation: How the place of Britain and the Crown has shifted in Canadian schooling</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/colonialism-was-a-disaster-and-the-facts-prove-it-84496">Colonialism was a disaster and the facts prove it</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/no-ordinary-diamond-how-the-koh-i-noor-became-an-imperial-possession-200473">No ordinary diamond: how the Koh-i-Noor became an imperial possession</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/king-charless-coronation-can-the-british-monarchy-shed-its-imperial-past-202027">King Charles’s coronation: Can the British monarchy shed its imperial past?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/historical-lawsuit-affirms-indigenous-laws-on-par-with-canadas-109711">Historical lawsuit affirms Indigenous laws on par with Canada's</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/about-the-queen-and-the-crowns-crimes-or-how-to-talk-about-the-unmourned-podcast-191141">About the Queen and the Crown's crimes (or how to talk about the unmourned) — Podcast</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-book-that-changed-me-how-priya-satias-times-monster-landed-like-a-bomb-in-my-historians-brain-176023">The book that changed me: how Priya Satia's Time’s Monster landed like a bomb in my historian's brain</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Listen and Follow</h2>
<p>You can listen to or follow <em>Don’t Call Me Resilient</em> on <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/dont-call-me-resilient/id1549798876">Apple Podcasts</a>, <a href="https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5zaW1wbGVjYXN0LmNvbS9qZFg0Ql9DOA">Google Podcasts</a>, <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/37tK4zmjWvq2Sh6jLIpzp7">Spotify</a> or <a href="https://dont-call-me-resilient.simplecast.com">wherever you listen to your favourite podcasts</a>. <a href="mailto:DCMR@theconversation.com">We’d love to hear from you</a>, including any ideas for future episodes. Join The Conversation on <a href="https://twitter.com/ConversationCA">Twitter</a>, <a href="https://www.facebook.com/TheConversationCanada">Facebook</a>, <a href="https://www.instagram.com/theconversationdotcom/">Instagram</a> and <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@theconversation">TikTok</a> and use #DontCallMeResilient.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/204000/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
Although King Charles will have a low-key ceremony this coronation, the Crown Jewels will still figure prominently. An exploration of the jewels tells a tale of exploitation, rape and pillage.Vinita Srivastava, Host + Producer, Don't Call Me ResilientOllie Nicholas, Assistant Producer/Journalism Student, Don't Call Me ResilientLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2017842023-03-16T01:58:55Z2023-03-16T01:58:55ZWe used to think diamonds were everywhere. New research suggests they’ve always been rare<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/515344/original/file-20230314-4604-sz23ty.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=13%2C6%2C2195%2C1642&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Kimberlite volcanic rock with mantle crystals (green olivine and purple and orange garnet) and fragments of country rock (light grey).</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>New research is shedding light on the tumultuous processes that give rise to diamonds, by homing in on a distinct purple companion found alongside them.</p>
<p>Diamonds are highly prized for their qualities but also for their rarity. One way to look for them is to search for associated minerals that occur more commonly, such as the chromium-rich pyrope garnet.</p>
<p>This vibrant purple garnet is easily found by diamond exploration companies, in sediment downstream from potentially diamond-bearing volcanic pipes, and within the pipes themselves. The presence of purple garnet is an indicator diamonds may also be present.</p>
<p>Moreover, this garnet isn’t just found near diamonds, but is also consistently found inside them. So by enhancing our understanding of pyrope garnet, and how it forms, we can also enhance our understanding of diamond formation. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/perfectly-imperfect-the-discovery-of-the-second-largest-pink-diamond-has-left-the-world-in-awe-what-gives-diamonds-their-colour-187852">Perfectly imperfect: the discovery of the second-largest pink diamond has left the world in awe. What gives diamonds their colour?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>It was <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0024493704001331">previously thought</a> this type of garnet could not form very deep in the Earth. The theory went that it originated from a different chromium-rich mineral, called spinel, which formed at a shallow depth in the mantle and was then pushed down where temperatures and pressures were higher – leading to the garnet’s formation. </p>
<p>Our latest research, <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05665-2">published today</a> in Nature, uses a new model to revisit an old theory that suggests these pyrope garnets are actually formed much deeper in the mantle, about 100km-250km below the present surface. It also suggests diamonds may be rarer than we think.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/515665/original/file-20230316-20-allg6u.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A bright purple pyrope garnet against a great background." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/515665/original/file-20230316-20-allg6u.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/515665/original/file-20230316-20-allg6u.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=444&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515665/original/file-20230316-20-allg6u.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=444&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515665/original/file-20230316-20-allg6u.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=444&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515665/original/file-20230316-20-allg6u.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=558&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515665/original/file-20230316-20-allg6u.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=558&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515665/original/file-20230316-20-allg6u.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=558&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Pyrope garnets range in colour from lilac to violet. Their colour reflects high metal chromium content.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>How diamonds and pyrope garnet form</h2>
<p>Diamond is the crystalline form of elemental carbon, stable at very high pressures and relatively low temperatures – accidentally brought to the surface through powerful volcanic eruptions. </p>
<p>The necessary conditions to form diamond at great depth in the Earth’s mantle are only met in a few places. The geographic distribution of diamond is very uneven, with notable concentrations in southern Africa, the Congo, Tanzania, Canada, Siberia and Brazil. All of these places are characterised by ancient continental crust between 2.5 and 3.5 billion years old.</p>
<p>This crust is underlain by deep solid “roots” – like the keel of an iceberg – made of mantle which has become highly chemically depleted through intense melting over time. </p>
<p>It’s here in this depleted mantle, which extends as deep as 250km into the hotter, stirring mantle below it, that diamonds have the best opportunity to form. So what about their chromium-rich companions?</p>
<p>Using a thermodynamic computer model, we were able to demonstrate that pyrope garnets can form very deep in the Earth, at the same depths as diamonds. Specifically, these garnets would have formed during intense heating events with extreme pressures and temperatures in excess of 1,800°C.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/more-than-just-a-sparkling-gem-what-you-didnt-know-about-diamonds-101115">More than just a sparkling gem: what you didn't know about diamonds</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>How the continents grew their roots</h2>
<p>Although this is a very exciting finding in itself, what makes it more relevant is that it informs two other significant theories. </p>
<p>The first relates to why the continents formed the way they did – a point experts have long speculated about. </p>
<p>As mentioned above, pyrope garnets formed in extreme heat upwellings coming from great depths. Our findings suggest these upwellings then melted the upper mantle into place, forming the stable base of the continents. </p>
<p>In other words, the “roots” which help continents remain stable for billions of years are leftovers from the same mantle melting events that produced pyrope garnets.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/land-ahoy-study-shows-the-first-continents-bobbed-to-the-surface-more-than-3-billion-years-ago-171391">Land ahoy: study shows the first continents bobbed to the surface more than 3 billion years ago</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Diamond rarity</h2>
<p>The second major inference relates to the rarity of diamonds.</p>
<p>Some <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0012821X98000648">researchers believe</a> diamonds were not originally rare, but that many were destroyed as the mantle root was eroded and modified due to continental plates moving over the globe. Our model offers the alternative perspective that diamonds may have actually always been rare.</p>
<p>How can we evaluate whether the necessary cradles of diamond – bits of highly depleted mantle in the continental roots – were once common and became rare over time, or whether they have always been rare? </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/515667/original/file-20230316-14-gmme4l.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/515667/original/file-20230316-14-gmme4l.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/515667/original/file-20230316-14-gmme4l.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=275&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515667/original/file-20230316-14-gmme4l.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=275&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515667/original/file-20230316-14-gmme4l.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=275&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515667/original/file-20230316-14-gmme4l.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=346&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515667/original/file-20230316-14-gmme4l.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=346&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515667/original/file-20230316-14-gmme4l.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=346&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">This kaleidoscopic image is a diamond cradle rock under a microscope. In this view, the garnet is the black mineral.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>When intense melting events happened on the early Earth, the melts themselves erupted at the continental surface as very fluid lavas called “komatiites”. These lavas are preserved and are widely analysed. They have varying compositions, and our model predicts which of these could have formed alongside chromium-rich pyrope garnet. </p>
<p>We know from tens of thousands of chemical analyses of komatiite, that the particular composition associated with this pyrope garnet is very rare. That’s because in order for it to form, magma must interact with exceptionally depleted mantle that has gone through many melting events. Only between 8%-28% of komatiite fits this bill.</p>
<p>From this, we can infer that both the pyrope garnets, and the very depleted mantle domains they come from, have always been rare – even back on the early Earth. And because diamonds have an affinity for these particular rocks, they too must have always been rare – making them all the more remarkable.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/201784/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Carl Walsh holds a QUT postgraduate research award (PRA) scholarship.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Balz Kamber receives funding from the Australian Research Council for Discovery Grant DP220100136 for work that will build on the model predictions explained in this piece.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Emma Tomlinson receives funding from the European Union through an ERC consolidator grant ERC-COG-2021/101044276 to work Archaean lithosphere formation. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or European Research Council. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.</span></em></p>Diamonds form alongside a distinct purple companion. We studied it to reach a conclusion about how rare they might actually be.Carl Walsh, PhD Candidate, Queensland University of TechnologyBalz Kamber, Professor of Petrology, Queensland University of TechnologyEmma Tomlinson, Associate Professor, Trinity College DublinLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1901342022-09-12T20:27:36Z2022-09-12T20:27:36ZFolded diamond has been discovered in a rare type of meteorite. How is this possible?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/483643/original/file-20220909-20-4vcbiw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=19%2C118%2C4373%2C2845&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.eurekalert.org/multimedia/948716">Nick Wilson</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>A “folded diamond” doesn’t sound entirely plausible. But that’s exactly what we’ve found inside a rare group of meteorites known as ureilites, which likely came from the mantle of a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dwarf_planet">dwarf planet</a> or very large asteroid that was destroyed 4.56 billion years ago in a giant collision.</p>
<p>Within these space rocks, we found layered diamonds with distinctive fold patterns. Our discovery is published today in the journal <a href="https://www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.2208814119">Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences</a>.</p>
<p>Now of course, everyone knows diamond is <a href="https://pursuit.unimelb.edu.au/articles/diamonds-the-hard-facts">the hardest naturally occurring material</a>, so the obvious question was – how on Earth (or in space!) could a folded diamond possibly form?!</p>
<p>This was exactly the sort of curiosity-piquing observation that sends scientists diving down rabbit holes for months on end.</p>
<h2>A new analysis technique</h2>
<p>Carbon, one of the most abundant elements in the universe, can form all kinds of structures. Among the more familiar ones are graphite and, of course, diamond. But there’s also an unusual hexagonal form of diamond known as lonsdaleite, which has been suggested to be even harder than standard cubic diamonds.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A red, yellow and purple coloured marbling on a turquoise background" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/483643/original/file-20220909-20-4vcbiw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=19%2C118%2C4373%2C2845&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/483643/original/file-20220909-20-4vcbiw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/483643/original/file-20220909-20-4vcbiw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/483643/original/file-20220909-20-4vcbiw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/483643/original/file-20220909-20-4vcbiw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/483643/original/file-20220909-20-4vcbiw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/483643/original/file-20220909-20-4vcbiw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Distribution of lonsdaleite in yellow, diamond in pink, iron in red, silicon in green, and magnesium in blue within a meteorite detected by electron probe microanalysis.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.eurekalert.org/multimedia/948716">Nick Wilson</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Our team includes a bunch of people who drive development of advanced analysis techniques. At CSIRO, Nick Wilson, Colin MacRae and Aaron Torpy developed a new approach in electron microscopy to map the distribution of diamond, graphite and lonsdaleite in the meteorites. </p>
<p>When our mapping suggested the folded diamond might actually be lonsdaleite, we – Dougal McCulloch, Alan Salek and Matthew Field at RMIT – performed a more detailed investigation via a method called high-resolution transmission electron microscopy (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transmission_electron_microscopy">TEM</a>).</p>
<p>The results were exciting: we had found some of the largest lonsdaleite crystallites (microscopic crystals) ever discovered, about 1 micrometre across. So, those intriguing fold shapes were composed of polycrystalline lonsdaleite, meaning they were made from numerous tiny crystals.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/483167/original/file-20220907-16-j5r5p8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Folded structures visible in a greyscale image and the same visible in purple underneath" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/483167/original/file-20220907-16-j5r5p8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/483167/original/file-20220907-16-j5r5p8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=833&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/483167/original/file-20220907-16-j5r5p8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=833&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/483167/original/file-20220907-16-j5r5p8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=833&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/483167/original/file-20220907-16-j5r5p8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1047&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/483167/original/file-20220907-16-j5r5p8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1047&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/483167/original/file-20220907-16-j5r5p8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1047&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Microscope photo (top) and cathodoluminescence map (bottom) of folded lonsdaleite, purple, with diamond in green-yellow (field of view 0.25 mm).</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">PNAS, 2022</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Reconstructing the cataclysm</h2>
<p>And there was even more. We found the lonsdaleite had been partially converted to diamond and graphite, giving us clues to the sequence of events that had happened in the meteorites. Follow-up work at the Australian Synchrotron by Helen Brand confirmed this result. </p>
<p>By comparing the diamond, graphite and lonsdaleite across 18 different ureilite meteorites, we started to form a picture of what probably happened to produce the folded structures we found. At the first stage, graphite crystals folded deep inside the mantle of the asteroid thanks to high temperatures causing the other surrounding minerals to grow, pushing aside the graphite crystals. (You can see this in the schematic below.)</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Complex chart showing the stages of an asteroid crumbling apart" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/483169/original/file-20220907-24-5dem3n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/483169/original/file-20220907-24-5dem3n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=458&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/483169/original/file-20220907-24-5dem3n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=458&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/483169/original/file-20220907-24-5dem3n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=458&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/483169/original/file-20220907-24-5dem3n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=576&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/483169/original/file-20220907-24-5dem3n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=576&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/483169/original/file-20220907-24-5dem3n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=576&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Schematic indicating the timing and positions of diamond and lonsdaleite formation as the ureilite parent asteroid was partially destroyed by a giant impact (Ol, olivine; Px, pyroxene).</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">PNAS, 2022</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The second stage happened in the aftermath of the gigantic collision that catastrophically disrupted the ureilite parent asteroid. <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/maps.13755">Evidence in the meteorites</a> suggested the disruption event produced a rich mix of fluids and gases as it progressed.</p>
<p>This mix then caused lonsdaleite to form by replacement of the folded graphite crystals, almost perfectly preserving the intricate textures of the graphite. Of course, it’s not actually possible to <em>fold</em> lonsdaleite or diamond – it formed by replacement of pre-existing shapes.</p>
<p>We think this was driven by the hot fluid mix as pressure and temperature dropped immediately after the cataclysm. Then, shortly after, diamond and graphite partially replaced the lonsdaleite as the fluid further decompressed and cooled to form a gas mixture.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-rare-minerals-form-when-meteorites-slam-into-earth-105129">How rare minerals form when meteorites slam into Earth</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Manufacturing clues from nature</h2>
<p>The process is quite similar to a process used to manufacture diamonds known as <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YTML-JGRfMc">chemical vapour deposition</a>. These manufactured diamonds are widely used in industry today, particularly for cutting and grinding because diamond is so hard. The difference is that we think the lonsdaleite replaced the shaped graphite at moderately higher pressures than those normally used to grow diamonds, from a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supercritical_fluid">supercritical fluid</a> rather than a gas. </p>
<p>So, nature appears to have given us clues on how to make shaped ultra-hard micro machine parts! If we can find a way to replicate the process preserved in the meteorites, we can make these machine parts by replacement of pre-shaped graphite with lonsdaleite.</p>
<p>Being able to study these weird folded diamonds was possible because lead author Andrew Tomkins had time to follow his nose – we call this type of research “curiosity-driven science”. However, although <a href="https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2018/04/most-transformative-meds-originate-in-curiosity-driven-science-evidence-says/">curiosity-driven science produces important breakthroughs</a>, it isn’t normally funded by major funding agencies. They like to see well thought-out details for grand projects that already have a solid foundation of prior research.</p>
<p>We think a good way to boost Australia’s innovation would be to provide recognised science innovators a small grant annually to spend on research as they see fit; no questions asked, no justification or follow-up required.</p>
<p>For curiosity-driven research like our project, scientists need a small amount of time (and money) that can be spent with complete freedom; this produces <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-secret-to-creativity-according-to-science-89592">the creativity</a> that drives innovation. You never know what else we might find out there.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/we-created-diamonds-in-mere-minutes-without-heat-by-mimicking-the-force-of-an-asteroid-collision-150369">We created diamonds in mere minutes, without heat — by mimicking the force of an asteroid collision</a>
</strong>
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</p>
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<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/190134/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Andrew Tomkins receives funding from the Australia Research Council. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alan Salek receives a RSS Scholarship. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Dougal McCulloch receives funding from Australian Research Council.</span></em></p>An unusual folded shape in a meteorite prompted scientists to dive deep into a rabbit hole – discovering a potential new way to make specially shaped diamonds in the lab.Andrew Tomkins, Geologist, Monash UniversityAlan Salek, PhD Researcher, RMIT UniversityDougal McCulloch, Professor, RMIT UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1878522022-07-29T05:21:00Z2022-07-29T05:21:00ZPerfectly imperfect: the discovery of the second-largest pink diamond has left the world in awe. What gives diamonds their colour?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/476639/original/file-20220729-20-vod0jt.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=6%2C9%2C2038%2C1352&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Lucapa Diamond Company/EPA</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Usually when goods are flawed, we expect their value to drop, but it’s the exact opposite for diamonds. Ironically, it is imperfections that impart colour to diamonds – and these “fancy” diamonds are some of the most sought after in the world.</p>
<p>Diamonds are made of carbon atoms organised in compact structures. Clear, perfect diamonds sparkle because light reflects off their internal surfaces. Of course, these diamonds are valuable.</p>
<p>However, when diamonds host impurities, or are subjected to intense pressure, they can develop distinctive colours. Coloured diamonds are extremely prized for their beauty and rarity, and can be several orders of magnitude more expensive than clear diamonds. </p>
<p>So it’s no surprise the world was astonished when the Western Australia-owned Lucapa Diamond Company announced the discovery of the <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-07-28/big-pink-diamond-discovered-in-angola-largest-in-300-years/101276078">Lulo Rose</a> this week. The 170-carat rough pink diamond, found in Angola, is the second-largest pink diamond ever discovered. </p>
<h2>Few and far between</h2>
<p>Coloured diamonds represents only 0.01% (one in 10,000) of diamonds mined in the world. Natural yellow and brown are the most common and, as you might expect, are therefore not overly expensive.</p>
<p>However, blue, green, violet, orange, pink and red diamonds are extremely rare and exist in minute quantities. These are truly coveted.</p>
<p>Ultra-rare coloured diamonds have been sold for record-breaking prices. The Pink Star, weighing 59.6 carats (about the size of a strawberry), is the most expensive diamond ever sold, for a staggering A$94.2 million. </p>
<p>It’s worth mentioning the Pink Star originally came from a diamond weighing in at 132.5 carats. More than half of its weight was lost in the process of cutting and polishing the stone – a process that took 20 months.</p>
<p>At 170 carats, it’s quite possible the Lulo Rose, if auctioned, could become the most expensive diamond in history. </p>
<p>The only pink diamond larger than it is the Daria-i-Noor (185 carats), which is the centrepiece of the Iranian crown jewels, and has never been for sale.</p>
<h2>So why are coloured diamonds so scarce?</h2>
<p>Physical and chemical purity yields clear diamonds. So coloured diamonds form as a result of imperfections. But it’s very rare for imperfections to arise in a material that is not only extremely hard, but also chemically simple.</p>
<p>There are three main imperfections that produce coloured diamonds: impurity, damage and distortion. These are imperfections in the structure of the diamond that affect how light passes through the gem – specifically the diffraction and absorption of different wavelengths of light. And this is what leads to the different colours we see. </p>
<p>The main <em>impurities</em> in diamonds comes in the form of very light elements, such nitrogen, boron and hydrogen, which we generally find in abundance in the oceans and atmosphere. These elements can result in specific colours. For example, boron-rich diamonds will be blue, while nitrogen-rich diamonds will be yellow.</p>
<p>Then there are <em>damaged</em> diamonds, wherein the damage happens when a diamond has been sitting adjacent to radioactive elements, such as uranium, thorium or potassium. </p>
<p>Finally, <em>distortion</em> refers to the twisting and bending of a diamond’s crystal lattice under immense pressure. This causes defects a hundred times smaller than the width of a human hair, yet it’s enough to diffract light and bring colour to the gem.</p>
<p>Every coloured diamond has a cocktail of imperfections, which is why no two diamonds are the same. However, they do all have one thing in common: each diamond is rooted in geological history. Diamonds can be billions of years old. In that time, some have travelled from the depths of the planet to its surface, only for us to claim them.</p>
<p>Take yellow and blue diamonds. Light elements such as nitrogen and boron are concentrated in our oceans and atmosphere, but we know diamonds must form within the heart of the planet. So the key here is plate tectonics, and specifically a process called subduction. </p>
<p>Subduction is a geological process by which the oceanic lithosphere (a part of the outer crust) is recycled into Earth’s mantle. This is how light elements manage to get deep into Earth’s interior – eventually becoming part of coloured diamonds. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/476517/original/file-20220728-33778-qu1qi1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/476517/original/file-20220728-33778-qu1qi1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=340&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476517/original/file-20220728-33778-qu1qi1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=340&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476517/original/file-20220728-33778-qu1qi1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=340&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476517/original/file-20220728-33778-qu1qi1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=427&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476517/original/file-20220728-33778-qu1qi1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=427&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476517/original/file-20220728-33778-qu1qi1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=427&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Diamonds form deep in Earth’s interior.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AdobeStock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>A unique window into Earth’s interior</h2>
<p>Pink diamonds have their own geological story. Most scientists think carbon on our seabed, when thrust back into Earth’s interior, can not only form diamonds but also be deformed. </p>
<p>When it’s under enormous pressure and considerable temperatures, the way carbon is supposed to be assembled is distorted, and this is what leads to pink diamond formation.</p>
<p>However, if Earth pushes a little too hard, the pink hue quickly turns brown or, as some would call it, “champagne” or “cognac”. Yet there’s still much we don’t know about pink diamonds. For one, why have about 80% of pink diamonds come from a single recently closed mine in Western Australia?</p>
<p>The Argyle mine was once the world’s largest diamond mine, but was <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/rural/2020-11-03/wa-argyle-pink-diamond-mine-closure/12840466">shut down</a> in 2020 after becoming economically unviable. Still, this mine is truly unique – not only because of how many pink diamonds it has produced, but because it sits in a geologically intriguing area.</p>
<p>For years, scientists and diamond companies believed diamonds large enough to be mined could be found only in the heart of ancient continents. But the Argyle mine sits at what was once the edge of two continents that collided and stitched together only 1.8 billion years ago. </p>
<p>This might sound like a long time, but in geological terms it’s not. Argyle and its pink diamonds probably hold the answer for pink diamond formation, but finding it will require further examination.</p>
<p>With the mine having closed, and pink diamonds becoming rarer as we speak, one can only hope scientists will soon unravel the mystery of how pink diamonds form. Perhaps, with that knowledge, we may yet find another trove. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/we-created-diamonds-in-mere-minutes-without-heat-by-mimicking-the-force-of-an-asteroid-collision-150369">We created diamonds in mere minutes, without heat — by mimicking the force of an asteroid collision</a>
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<hr>
<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/187852/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Denis Fougerouse receives funding from the Australian Research Council and the Mineral Research Institute of Western Australia. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Hugo Olierook and Luc Doucet do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Geology experts explain why coloured diamonds are so much rarer than clear ones – and why the newly discovered Lulo Rose might become the most expensive diamond in history.Luc Doucet, Research Fellow at the Earth Dynamics Research Group, member of TIGeR, Curtin UniversityDenis Fougerouse, Research Fellow, School of Earth and Planetary Sciences and The Institute for Geoscience Research (TIGeR), Curtin UniversityHugo Olierook, Research Fellow in Geology, Curtin UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1839722022-06-08T14:48:24Z2022-06-08T14:48:24ZDiamond mines are not a girl’s best friend — Podcast<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/465786/original/file-20220527-15-f7ghs3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=5%2C0%2C1781%2C1276&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A miner is silhouetted as he passes through a doorway in a mine shaft 100 feet below the surface at the Giant Mine near Yellowknife, N.W.T. in July, 2003.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld</span></span></figcaption></figure><iframe height="480px" width="100%" frameborder="no" scrolling="no" seamless="" src="https://player.simplecast.com/fb609e39-d729-4a54-860a-8a411be157ae?dark=false&show=true"></iframe>
<p><iframe id="tc-infographic-572" class="tc-infographic" height="100" src="https://cdn.theconversation.com/infographics/572/661898416fdc21fc4fdef6a5379efd7cac19d9d5/site/index.html" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p>When you think diamonds, you probably think of romance, weddings and Valentine’s Day. And it’s no accident we think this way: A century of marketing has convinced us that diamonds symbolize love. </p>
<p>In Canada, magazine ads celebrate the “purity” of Northern Canadian diamonds as an ethical alternative to conflict diamonds.</p>
<p>But this marketing strategy actually hides enormous social problems that people connected to the mines say they’ve experienced. This includes some of Canada’s highest rates of violence against women. </p>
<p>The story our guests tell today is not one of numbers. Instead, they’re sharing narratives gathered and collected through interviews and sharing circles about how lives have changed after the mines opened.</p>
<p>Since diamond mining started in Canada in 1998, Canada has become the third-largest producer of diamonds in the world. In 2019, the inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/gendered-impacts-resource-extraction-mmiwg-1.5195580">linked resource extraction to spikes in violence against women</a>. </p>
<p><a href="https://dont-call-me-resilient.simplecast.com/episodes/diamond-mines-are-not-a-girls-best-friend-podcast">On today’s episode of Don’t Call Me Resilient</a>, I chat with Rebecca Hall, assistant professor of global development studies at Queen’s University and the author of <a href="https://utorontopress.com/9781487540845/refracted-economies/"><em>Refracted Economies: Diamond Mining and Social Reproduction in the North</em></a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/467241/original/file-20220606-14-mg8snb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="The Diavik mine pit is located on a 20 square kilometre island on Lac de Gras and is scheduled to shut down in 2025." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/467241/original/file-20220606-14-mg8snb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/467241/original/file-20220606-14-mg8snb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=386&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/467241/original/file-20220606-14-mg8snb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=386&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/467241/original/file-20220606-14-mg8snb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=386&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/467241/original/file-20220606-14-mg8snb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=484&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/467241/original/file-20220606-14-mg8snb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=484&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/467241/original/file-20220606-14-mg8snb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=484&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Lac de Gras surrounds the Diavik mine pit about 300 kilometres northeast of Yellowknife, N.W.T.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.cpimages.com/CS.aspx?VP3=DamView&VBID=2RLQ2JTAL3FEY&SMLS=1&RW=1324&RH=686#/DamView&VBID=2RLQ2JTAL3P4E&PN=1&WS=SearchResults">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Hall said this in our interview:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“A mine comes to town and all of a sudden it has this huge presence. And you see flyers everywhere trying to recruit workers, but then just as quickly as it comes, it can go. So once again you got disruption upon disruption. All of these things taken together can create the conditions for gender violence.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Joining in on the conversation is Della Green, former victim services co-ordinator, at the <a href="https://www.nativewomensnwt.com/">Native Women’s Association of the Northwest Territories</a>.</p>
<p>Green said this about how she felt after she first moved to Yellowknife and her husband went to work in the mines:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“I was so isolated and I couldn’t find anything that could support women. There was no programs. There was no get together. I was lost for the first little bit when I moved up there and I don’t know what it was like for other women, probably the same.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>One of the women Hall interviewed for her book told her, “Diamonds are said to be a girl’s best friend. I’m not sure which girls, because it’s certainly not anyone in here.”</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/missing-and-murdered-indigenous-women-and-girls-an-epidemic-on-both-sides-of-the-medicine-line-118261">Missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls: An epidemic on both sides of the Medicine Line</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Transcript</h2>
<p>An unedited transcript of the episode is available <a href="https://dont-call-me-resilient.simplecast.com/episodes/diamond-mines-are-not-a-girls-best-friend-podcast/transcript">here</a>.</p>
<h2>ICYMI — Articles published in The Conversation</h2>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://theconversation.com/diamond-mines-in-the-northwest-territories-are-not-a-girls-best-friend-179343">Diamond mines in the Northwest Territories are not a girl’s best friend</a></li>
<li><a href="https://theconversation.com/mining-push-continues-despite-water-crisis-in-neskantaga-first-nation-and-ontarios-ring-of-fire-150522">Mining push continues despite water crisis in Neskantaga First Nation and Ontario’s Ring of Fire</a></li>
<li><a href="https://theconversation.com/earth-day-colonialisms-role-in-the-overexploitation-of-natural-resources-113995">Colonialism’s role in the overexploitation of natural resources</a></li>
<li><a href="https://theconversation.com/using-maps-as-a-weapon-to-resist-extractive-industries-on-indigenous-territories-111472">Using maps as a weapon to resist extractive industries on Indigenous territories</a></li>
<li><a href="https://theconversation.com/missing-and-murdered-indigenous-women-and-girls-an-epidemic-on-both-sides-of-the-medicine-line-118261">Missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls: An epidemic on both sides of the Medicine Line</a></li>
<li><a href="https://theconversation.com/end-the-genocide-little-action-on-mmiwg-calls-for-justice-in-the-3-years-since-the-national-inquiry-concluded-174320">‘End the genocide’: Little action on MMIWG calls for justice in the 3 years since the national inquiry concluded</a></li>
<li><a href="https://theconversation.com/two-years-after-the-mmiwg-report-targeted-work-must-move-urgently-ahead-160663">Two years after the MMIWG report, targeted work must move urgently ahead</a></li>
<li><a href="https://theconversation.com/people-in-abusive-relationships-face-many-barriers-to-leaving-pets-should-not-be-one-139540">People in abusive relationships face many barriers to leaving — pets should not be one</a></li>
</ul>
<h2>Additional reading + listening</h2>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://utorontopress.com/9781487540845/refracted-economies/"><em>Refracted Economies: Diamond Mining and Social Reproduction in the North</em></a>, by Rebecca Hall</li>
<li>“<a href="https://yorkspace.library.yorku.ca/xmlui/handle/10315/34474">Diamonds are Forever: A Decolonizing, Feminist Approach to Diamond Mining in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories</a>,” a dissertation by Rebecca Hall</li>
<li>“<a href="https://www.mmiwg-ffada.ca/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Final_Report_Vol_1a-1.pdf">Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls Final Report</a>”</li>
<li><a href="https://www.uap.ualberta.ca/titles/903-9781772123678-keetsahnak-our-missing-and-murdered-indigenous-sisters"><em>Keetsahnak / Our Missing and Murdered Indigenous Sisters</em></a>, edited by Kim Anderson, Maria Campbell and Christi Belcourt </li>
<li>“<a href="https://www.amnesty.ca/what-we-do/no-more-stolen-sisters/out-of-sight-out-of-mind-report/">Out of Sight, Out of Mind</a>,” a report by Amnesty International</li>
<li>“<a href="https://www.cidse.org/2021/02/03/my-pain-the-struggle-to-report-sexual-abuse-during-the-2006-clean-up-campaign-of-the-zimbabwe-diamond-industry/">My pain: The struggle to report sexual abuse around the Zimbabwe diamond industry</a>,” by International Co-operation for Development and Solidarity</li>
<li><a href="https://www.nnsl.com/news/mining-company-womens-council-jointly-confront-intimate-partner-violence/">Mining company, women’s council jointly confront intimate partner violence</a>, by Simon Whitehouse in <em>NNSL Media</em></li>
<li><a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/reel.12240">“A rights-based approach to indigenous women and gender inequities in resource development in northern Canada” in <em>Reciel</em></a>, by Konstantia Koutouki, Katherine Lofts and Giselle Davidian</li>
<li><a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/41638593">“All That Glitters: Diamond Mining and Tåîchô Youth in Behchokö, Northwest Territories” in <em>Arctic</em></a>, by Colleen M. Davison and Penelope Hawe</li>
<li><a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/13552074.2021.1982179">“Gendered social media communication around mining: patriarchy, diamonds, and seeking feminist solidarity online” in <em>Gender & Development</em></a>, by Juliet Gudhlanga and Samuel J. Spiegel</li>
</ul>
<h2>Follow and listen</h2>
<p>You can listen to or follow <em>Don’t Call Me Resilient</em> on <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/dont-call-me-resilient/id1549798876">Apple Podcasts</a>, <a href="https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5zaW1wbGVjYXN0LmNvbS9qZFg0Ql9DOA">Google Podcasts</a>, <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/37tK4zmjWvq2Sh6jLIpzp7">Spotify</a> or <a href="https://dont-call-me-resilient.simplecast.com/">wherever you listen to your favourite podcasts</a>. <a href="mailto:theculturedesk@theconversation.com">We’d love to hear from you</a>, including any ideas for future episodes. Join <em>The Conversation</em> on <a href="https://twitter.com/ConversationCA">Twitter</a>, <a href="https://www.facebook.com/TheConversationCanada">Facebook</a>, <a href="https://www.instagram.com/theconversationdotcom/">Instagram</a> and <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@theconversation">TikTok</a> and use #DontCallMeResilient.</p>
<p><em>Don’t Call Me Resilient is a production of The Conversation Canada. This podcast was produced with a grant for Journalism Innovation from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. The series is produced and hosted by Vinita Srivastava. My co-producers are: Haley Lewis, associate producer Vaishnavi Dandekar and sound producer Lygia Navarro. Reza Dahya is our sound designer. Jennifer Moroz is our consulting producer. Lisa Varano is our audience development editor and Scott White is the CEO of the Conversation Canada.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/183972/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
In today’s episode, we hear from two women who talk about how diamond mines in the Northwest Territories have negatively impacted women and girls and perpetuated gender violence.Vinita Srivastava, Host + Producer, Don't Call Me ResilientLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1793432022-04-21T17:50:04Z2022-04-21T17:50:04ZDiamond mines in the Northwest Territories are not a girl’s best friend<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/456413/original/file-20220405-18-8poh5l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=8%2C0%2C1985%2C1613&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A woman examines a diamond she is in the process of cutting and polishing in Yellowknife, N.W.T. in a photo from 2003.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source"> (CP PHOTO/Bob Weber)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Almost three years ago, the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG) released its <a href="https://www.mmiwg-ffada.ca/final-report/">final report</a> and among its findings, the report identified resource extraction as a site of gender violence. </p>
<p>The relationship between extraction and gender violence has been observed in <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/13552074.2021.1979798">extractive sites around the globe</a>. And in Canada, this <a href="https://www.uap.ualberta.ca/titles/903-9781772123678-keetsahnak-our-missing-and-murdered-indigenous-sisters">gender violence</a> is shaped by extraction and <a href="https://www.facinghistory.org/stolen-lives-indigenous-peoples-canada-and-indian-residential-schools/historical-background/dispossession-destruction-and-reserves">settler colonial dispossession of Indigenous lands</a> and livelihoods.</p>
<p>What is it about extractive projects that creates the conditions for gender violence? </p>
<p>In <a href="https://utorontopress.com/9781487540845/refracted-economies/"><em>Refracted Economies: Diamond Mining and Social Reproduction in the North</em></a>, I analyze the gender impact of Canadian diamond mines. As a settler researcher who grew up in southern Canada, I partnered with the <a href="https://www.nativewomensnwt.com/">Native Women’s Association of the Northwest Territories</a> and spoke with Dene, Métis, Inuit and non-Indigenous northern women about their experiences with the mines.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/mining-push-continues-despite-water-crisis-in-neskantaga-first-nation-and-ontarios-ring-of-fire-150522">Mining push continues despite water crisis in Neskantaga First Nation and Ontario’s Ring of Fire</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>In Canada, the first diamond mine opened in the Northwest Territories on Dene land in 1998. Since then, three other diamond mines have opened there, and Canada has become the <a href="https://www.nrcan.gc.ca/our-natural-resources/minerals-mining/minerals-metals-facts/diamond-facts/20513">third largest diamond producer</a> in the world. </p>
<p>The Canadian diamond industry was established amid <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/0035853042000249979">international concerns</a> around conflict — or blood — diamonds. Canada’s diamond industry lauds itself as an <a href="https://doi.org/10.3167/fcl.2017.790107">ethical alternative</a> to diamonds from elsewhere, but these gems are <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8330.2012.01012.x">mined on Dene land</a> and, in restructuring the lands and livelihoods of northern communities, the diamond industry brings with it a new, and newly gendered, colonial violence.</p>
<h2>A pillar of settler development</h2>
<p>Resource extraction has long been a pillar of <a href="https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/red-skin-white-masks">settler</a> <a href="https://utorontopress.com/9781442664357/northern-communities-working-together%22%22">development</a> in northern Canada. </p>
<p>Regionally, diamond mines were established on the heels of the longstanding gold industry, and they have reproduced some dynamics of past settler extractive projects. But the diamond mines have also brought with them new characteristics with unique gender impacts. </p>
<p>Unlike mining towns that sprouted up throughout the north in the 20th century, diamond mines are organized through a fly-in/fly-out (FIFO) structure. This means that workers fly in for prolonged mining shifts, and fly out for their time off.</p>
<p>FIFO, or DIDO (drive-in/drive-out), has become the preferred <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/00049182.2013.817037">extractive model</a> in <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.exis.2016.02.009">Canada and elsewhere</a>. By making long-distance commutes part of everyday operations, the FIFO/DIDO model is an intensified expression of the home/work divide, where <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/144477">home is gendered as feminine space and work as masculine space</a>.</p>
<p>For many women workers I spoke to, the separation of work from home meant that work in the diamond mines was not accessible. This was because workers live away from home for extended periods of time, and weren’t able to care for kin and community. </p>
<p>This “caring divide” exacerbates existing tendencies for hypermasculine <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/20459158">mining cultures</a>, or what the MMIWG report calls “<a href="https://www.mmiwg-ffada.ca/final-report/">man camps</a>.”</p>
<p>Women who had worked at the diamond mines shared stories of intense visibility. These experiences ranged from a general feeling of greater scrutiny from other workers, to overt sexual harassment. While the women I interviewed held a variety of positions at the camps, it was women who worked in housekeeping and positions at a lower pay scale with higher degrees of precarity who described the most explicit and pervasive experiences with gendered discrimination and violence.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A diamond mine pit with winding roads surrounded by water" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/456411/original/file-20220405-22-pku0v0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/456411/original/file-20220405-22-pku0v0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=386&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/456411/original/file-20220405-22-pku0v0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=386&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/456411/original/file-20220405-22-pku0v0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=386&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/456411/original/file-20220405-22-pku0v0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=484&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/456411/original/file-20220405-22-pku0v0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=484&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/456411/original/file-20220405-22-pku0v0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=484&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Lac de Gras surrounds the Diavik mine pit about 300 km northeast of Yellowknife, N.W.T. in a photo from 2003.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Heavy care burdens</h2>
<p>The FIFO structure has led to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/0966369X.2018.1554555">intensified pressure</a> on people, usually women, at home. While mine workers and their families spoke about the financial benefits of mine employment, many female spouses likened the experience of having a spouse at camp to single parenting. </p>
<p>One Dene woman I interviewed said:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“I feel like I live in a community where families are fragmented on purpose. We choose to remove half of the caregivers half of the time. How can this not have a significant impact on raising a family or being in a marriage?” </p>
</blockquote>
<p>These heavy care burdens are coupled with new financial inequality within households, with mine workers often bringing in significantly higher wages than other family members. </p>
<p>The women I spoke with shared concerns that inequalities in both <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/0966369X.2018.1425287">caring labours</a> and finances were shaping conditions for interpersonal violence, and making it more difficult for women to leave violent situations.</p>
<p>When women shared their stories of the diamond mines, they did not express the impact as an isolated or unique phenomenon. Instead, I heard stories that wove the experiences of the diamond mines into ongoing processes of settler colonialism, including the <a href="https://nctr.ca/records/reports/">intergenerational trauma of residential schools</a>.</p>
<p>Diamonds carry with them <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8330.2012.00996.x">heavy imagery</a> of romance and commitment, symbolizing a love that is, as diamond company De Beers puts it, “forever.” </p>
<p>However, while a century of marketing has made diamond rings a symbol of heteronormative happy endings, when I spoke with northern women about their experience with the diamond mines, I heard a different story. </p>
<p>As one research participant said, “Diamonds are said to be a girl’s best friend. I’m not sure which girls they are because it’s certainly not anyone in here.”</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/179343/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rebecca Hall is a research partner with We Will Not Be Banned From Our Land (Dedats'eetsaa: Tlicho Research and Training Institute). She receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.</span></em></p>While marketing has made diamond rings a symbol of heteronormative happy endings, women from the Northwest Territories tell a different story about their experiences with the diamond mines.Rebecca Hall, Assistant Professor, Global Development Studies, Queen's University, OntarioLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1796732022-03-30T19:09:04Z2022-03-30T19:09:04ZVolcanoes, diamonds, and blobs: a billion-year history of Earth’s interior shows it’s more mobile than we thought<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/454466/original/file-20220326-23-11mnxve.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C837%2C8606%2C6725&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Earth’s interior 80 million years ago with hot structures in yellow to red (darker is shallower) and cold structures in blue (darker is deeper).</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Ömer Bodur/Nature</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Deep in the Earth beneath us lie two blobs the size of continents. One is under Africa, the other under the Pacific Ocean. </p>
<p>The blobs have their roots 2,900km below the surface, almost halfway to the centre of the Earth. They are thought to be the birthplace of rising columns of hot rock called “deep mantle plumes” that reach Earth’s surface.</p>
<p>When these plumes first reach the surface, giant volcanic eruptions occur – the kind that contributed to the extinction of the dinosaurs 65.5 million years ago. The blobs may also control the eruption of a kind of rock called kimberlite, which brings diamonds from depths 120-150km (and in some cases up to around 800km) to Earth’s surface.</p>
<p>Scientists have known the blobs existed for a long time, but how they have behaved over Earth’s history has been an open question. In new research, we modelled a billion years of geological history and discovered <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-04538-y">the blobs gather together and break apart</a> much like continents and supercontinents.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/454511/original/file-20220327-15-tltpwx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/454511/original/file-20220327-15-tltpwx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=508&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454511/original/file-20220327-15-tltpwx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=508&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454511/original/file-20220327-15-tltpwx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=508&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454511/original/file-20220327-15-tltpwx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=638&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454511/original/file-20220327-15-tltpwx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=638&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454511/original/file-20220327-15-tltpwx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=638&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Earth’s blobs as imaged from seismic data. The African blob is at the top and the Pacific blob at the bottom.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Ömer Bodur</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>A model for Earth blob evolution</h2>
<p>The blobs are in the mantle, the thick layer of hot rock between Earth’s crust and its core. The mantle is solid but slowly flows over long timescales. We know the blobs are there because they slow down waves caused by earthquakes, which suggests the blobs are hotter than their surroundings.</p>
<p>Scientists generally agree the blobs are linked to the movement of tectonic plates at Earth’s surface. However, how the blobs have changed over the course of Earth’s history has puzzled them. </p>
<p>One school of thought has been that the present blobs have acted as anchors, locked in place for hundreds of millions of years while other rock moves around them. However, we know tectonic plates and mantle plumes move over time, and research suggests <a href="https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/2014GL059875">the shape of the blobs is changing</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-04538-y">Our new research</a> shows Earth’s blobs have changed shape and location far more than previously thought. In fact, over history they have assembled and broken up in the same way that continents and supercontinents have at Earth’s surface. </p>
<p>We used Australia’s <a href="https://nci.org.au/">National Computational Infrastructure</a> to run advanced computer simulations of how Earth’s mantle has flowed over a billion years. </p>
<p>These models are based on <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-map-that-fills-a-500-million-year-gap-in-earths-history-79838">reconstructing the movements of tectonic plates</a>. When plates push into one another, the ocean floor is pushed down between them in a process known as subduction. The cold rock from the ocean floor sinks deeper and deeper into the mantle, and once it reaches a depth of about 2,000km it pushes the hot blobs aside.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/bljnLFHd1cQ?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">The past 200 million years of Earth’s interior. Hot structures are in yellow to red (darker is shallower) and cold structures in blue (darker is deeper).</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>We found that just like continents, the blobs can assemble – forming “superblobs” as in the current configuration – and break up over time. </p>
<p>A key aspect of our models is that although the blobs change position and shape over time, they still fit the pattern of volcanic and kimberlite eruptions recorded at Earth’s surface. This pattern was previously a key argument for the blobs as unmoving “anchors”.</p>
<p>Strikingly, our models reveal the African blob assembled as recently as 60 million years ago – in stark contrast to previous suggestions the blob could have existed in roughly its present form <a href="https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1318135111">for nearly ten times as long</a>.</p>
<h2>Remaining questions about the blobs</h2>
<p>How did the blobs originate? What exactly are they made of? We still don’t know.</p>
<p>The blobs may be denser than the surrounding mantle, and as such they could consist of material separated out from the rest of the mantle <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/nature06355">early in Earth’s history</a>. This could explain why the mineral composition of the Earth is different from that expected from models based on the composition of meteorites.</p>
<p>Alternatively, the density of the blobs could be explained by the accumulation of dense oceanic material from slabs of rock pushed down by tectonic plate movement. </p>
<p>Regardless of this debate, our work shows sinking slabs are more likely to transport fragments of continents to the African blob than to the Pacific blob. Interestingly, this result is consistent with recent work suggesting the source of mantle plumes rising from the African blob contains continental material, whereas plumes rising from the Pacific blob do not. </p>
<h2>Tracking the blobs to find minerals and diamonds</h2>
<p>While our work addresses fundamental questions about the evolution of our planet, it also has practical applications. </p>
<p>Our models provide a framework to more accurately target the location of minerals associated with mantle upwelling. This includes diamonds brought up to the surface by kimberlites that seem to be associated with the blobs.</p>
<p>Magmatic sulfide deposits, which are the world’s primary reserve of nickel, are also associated with mantle plumes. By helping target minerals such as nickel (an essential ingredient of lithium-ion batteries and other renewable energy technologies) our models can contribute to the transition to a low-emission economy.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/179673/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nicolas Flament receives funding from the Australian Research Council and from De Beers.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Andrew Merdith was supported by the Deep Carbon Observatory and the Richard Lounsbery Foundation.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ömer F. Bodur receives funding from the Australian Research Council and from De Beers.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Simon Williams receives funding from the Australian Research Council and the National Natural Science Foundation of China. </span></em></p>Ancient blobs deep inside the Earth gather together and break apart like continents, according to new research.Nicolas Flament, Senior Lecturer, University of WollongongAndrew Merdith, Research fellow, University of LeedsÖmer F. Bodur, Postdoctoral research fellow, University of WollongongSimon Williams, Research Fellow, Northwest University, Xi'anLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1641592021-07-09T06:01:55Z2021-07-09T06:01:55ZThird-largest diamond found in June, then a bigger one days later. What’s behind the monster gem boom?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/410511/original/file-20210709-23-1k4xuyv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C383%2C2607%2C1289&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Lucara Diamond Corp</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>A mega diamond of a staggering 1,174 carats was recently <a href="https://lucaradiamond.com/newsroom/news-releases/lucara-recovers-1-174-carat-diamond-from-the-karow-122821/">recovered</a> from the Karowe mine in Botswana, making it one of the largest natural diamonds ever recovered. </p>
<p>More remarkably, the stone was found alongside several other similar diamonds weighing <a href="https://twitter.com/LucaraDiamond/status/1407469979994259456?s=20">471, 218 and 159 carats</a> — suggesting the original diamond could have had a weight of more than 2,000 carats when it first formed.</p>
<p>The latest discovery is hot on the heels of <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-06-18/botswana-diamond-third-largest/100226840">another mega diamond</a> of more than 1,000 carats which was recovered from the Jwaneng mine, also in Botswana, only a few weeks ago. </p>
<p>Why are we seeing a sudden rush in the recovery of these mammoth gems?</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/410512/original/file-20210709-15-10mwy8m.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/410512/original/file-20210709-15-10mwy8m.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/410512/original/file-20210709-15-10mwy8m.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=425&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/410512/original/file-20210709-15-10mwy8m.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=425&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/410512/original/file-20210709-15-10mwy8m.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=425&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/410512/original/file-20210709-15-10mwy8m.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=534&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/410512/original/file-20210709-15-10mwy8m.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=534&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/410512/original/file-20210709-15-10mwy8m.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=534&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Botswana Vice President Slumber Tsogwane, on the left, holds the 1098 carat diamond unearthed in Botswana in June. This one has now been replaced by a larger one.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Are diamonds really ‘rare’ as they’re said to be?</h2>
<p>In 2020, global diamond production amounted to <a href="https://www.bain.com/insights/global-diamond-industry-2020-21/">111 million carats</a> or just over 20 tonnes of diamond. However, a small proportion of this production is of high-quality gemstones. The vast majority of diamonds are small, at less than one carat.</p>
<p>Australia’s Argyle mine, famous for its pink diamonds (and once the world’s largest diamond mine by volume) ceased its operations <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/rural/2020-11-03/wa-argyle-pink-diamond-mine-closure/12840466">late last year since it was no longer economically viable</a>. This is because most of the diamonds extracted were small, and therefore only useful for industrial applications.</p>
<p>These small diamonds are so common that a <a href="https://www.tdiinternational.com/product/straight-super-hard-surface-diamond-scribe/">diamond-tipped scribe tool</a> can be purchased for less than the price of a tank of petrol.</p>
<p>Large gemstone-quality diamonds, on the other hand, are extremely rare. To understand why, we need to look at how diamonds are formed, as well as how they are mined.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/we-created-diamonds-in-mere-minutes-without-heat-by-mimicking-the-force-of-an-asteroid-collision-150369">We created diamonds in mere minutes, without heat — by mimicking the force of an asteroid collision</a>
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</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>How are natural diamonds formed?</h2>
<p>Natural diamonds are billions of years old. They’re formed deep in the Earth where temperatures and pressures are high enough to squash carbon atoms into a dense, crystalline structure. </p>
<p><a href="https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2018GC007534">Some scientists have suggested</a> there are vast quantities of diamonds hundreds of kilometres deep. But as the <a href="https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190503-the-deepest-hole-we-have-ever-dug">deepest hole ever drilled is about 12km</a>, we will never be able to mine these deep-earth diamonds. </p>
<p>So we have to make do with the relatively tiny fraction that make it to the surface. Diamonds near the ground’s surface are typically thought to have hitched a ride via a deep-source volcanic eruption. </p>
<p>These violent events need to be fast enough to deliver the diamonds to the surface and, at the same time, the diamonds can’t be exposed to extreme heat, shock or oxygen. It’s a narrow Goldilocks scenario.</p>
<p>Most diamonds are found within igneous rocks called Kimberlite. Kimberlite “pipes” are carrot-shaped columns of rock, often just tens of metres across, at the very top of deep-source volcanoes. </p>
<p>But only a small percentage of all known Kimberlite deposits contain diamonds. And only a handful of these are rich enough with diamonds to warrant being mined. </p>
<p>The ideal conditions are very <a href="https://physicsworld.com/a/geologists-map-likely-location-of-diamonds/">difficult to find</a>. Only particular regions of a continent can host diamonds as the crust has to be thick enough to have hosted a deep volcanic event. It also needs to be stable and ancient — characteristics which are common in parts of Australia and Africa.</p>
<p>Moreover, despite its reputation for being indestructible, diamond is a brittle material. This is a property that must be taken into account when polishing diamonds into gems. At regular atmospheric pressures, diamond is not even <a href="https://www.nationalgeographic.org/media/diamonds-arent-forever-wbt/">the most stable arrangement</a> of carbon atoms. </p>
<h2>A crushing task</h2>
<p>Large natural diamonds that manage to survive the tortuous path to the surface often get destroyed by the very process of us finding them. In most diamond mines, ore is blasted with explosives and then crushed into fragments to search for diamonds. </p>
<p>But new technologies are allowing mines to process ore with the aid of X-ray ore-sorting technology. This is specifically targeted for “mega diamond recovery”. </p>
<p>Although the diamond world is notoriously secretive about specifics, we do know the latest diamond from the Karowe mine was recovered using these newer <a href="https://lucaradiamond.com/newsroom/news-releases/lucara-recovers-1-174-carat-diamond-from-the-karow-122821/">techniques</a>. And it’s likely more of these mega stones will be discovered in the future.</p>
<p>Advances in diamond mining techniques, coupled with the inherent rarity of mega diamonds, is a boon for Botswana, where diamonds constitute a significant portion of the country’s GDP.</p>
<h2>Diamonds in the lab</h2>
<p>Diamonds are getting bigger in the laboratory too. For decades, artificial diamonds were manufactured using high-pressure equipment that mimics the extreme physical conditions deep in the earth. </p>
<p>Now, new technology employing low-pressure conditions and carefully controlled chemistry can make perfect diamond discs as large as a dinner plate. </p>
<p>This chemical approach is being used commercially to manufacture gem-quality stones for jewellery. But making diamonds in this way requires patience. To grow one millimetre of diamond takes <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0925963508005888">the best part of a day</a>, meaning mining will likely play a key role in the diamond industry for some time.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/more-than-just-a-sparkling-gem-what-you-didnt-know-about-diamonds-101115">More than just a sparkling gem: what you didn't know about diamonds</a>
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</em>
</p>
<hr>
<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/164159/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jodie Bradby receives funding from The Australian Research Council. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nigel Marks receives funding from the Australian Research Council</span></em></p>Smaller diamonds are so common that some can be purchased for cheaper than a tank of petrol. Larger diamonds are an entirely different story.Jodie Bradby, Professor of Physics, Australian National UniversityNigel Marks, Associate Professor of Physics, Curtin UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1503692020-11-19T00:48:48Z2020-11-19T00:48:48ZWe created diamonds in mere minutes, without heat — by mimicking the force of an asteroid collision<p>In nature, diamonds form deep in the Earth over billions of years. This process requires environments with exceptionally high pressure and temperatures exceeding 1,000°C.</p>
<p>Our international team has created two different types of diamond at room temperature — and in a matter of minutes. It’s the first time diamonds have successfully been produced in a lab without added heat.</p>
<p>Our findings are <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/smll.202004695">published</a> in the journal Small.</p>
<h2>There’s more than one form of diamond</h2>
<p>Carbon atoms can bond together in a number of ways to form different materials including soft black graphite and hard transparent diamond. </p>
<p>There are many well-known forms of carbon with graphite-like bonding, including <a href="https://science.sciencemag.org/content/306/5696/666">graphene</a>, the thinnest material ever measured. But did you know there’s also more than one type of carbon-based material with diamond-like bonding? </p>
<p>In a normal diamond, atoms are arranged in a cubic crystalline structure. However, it’s also possible to arrange these carbon atoms so they have a hexagonal crystal structure. </p>
<p>This different form of diamond is called Lonsdaleite, named after Irish crystallographer and Fellow of the Royal Society <a href="http://www.rsc.org/diversity/175-faces/all-faces/dame-kathleen-lonsdale-dbe-frs/">Kathleen Lonsdale</a>, who studied the structure of carbon using X-rays. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/370037/original/file-20201118-15-l798gn.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/370037/original/file-20201118-15-l798gn.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=310&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/370037/original/file-20201118-15-l798gn.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=310&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/370037/original/file-20201118-15-l798gn.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=310&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/370037/original/file-20201118-15-l798gn.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=390&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/370037/original/file-20201118-15-l798gn.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=390&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/370037/original/file-20201118-15-l798gn.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=390&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The crystal structures of cubic diamond and hexagonal Lonsdaleite have atoms arranged differently.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>There is much interest in Lonsdaleite, since it’s predicted to be <a href="https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.102.055503">58% harder than regular diamond</a> — which is already considered the hardest naturally-occurring material on Earth.</p>
<p>It was <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Laurence_Garvie/publication/252295522_The_Structure_of_Canyon_Diablo_Diamonds/links/5662075608ae418a78696e5a/The-Structure-of-Canyon-Diablo-Diamonds.pdf">first discovered</a> in nature, at the site of the Canyon Diablo meteorite crater in Arizona. Tiny amounts of the substance have since been synthesised in labs by heating and compressing graphite, using either a high-pressure press or explosives.</p>
<p>Our research shows both Lonsdaleite and regular diamond can be formed at room temperature in a lab setting, by just applying high pressures.</p>
<hr>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/graphite-to-capitalise-australia-needs-to-invest-in-conversion-53817">Graphite: to capitalise Australia needs to invest in conversion</a>
</strong>
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</p>
<hr>
<h2>The many ways to make a diamond</h2>
<p>Diamonds have been <a href="http://thehigherlearning.com/2014/07/06/the-story-of-the-man-who-only-made-10-for-figuring-out-how-to-make-diamond/">synthesised in laboratories</a> since as far back as 1954. Then, Tracy Hall at General Electric created them using a process that mimicked the natural conditions within the Earth’s crust, adding metallic catalysts to speed up the growth process. </p>
<p>The result was high-pressure, high-temperature diamonds similar to those found in nature, but often smaller and less perfect. These are still manufactured today, mainly for industrial applications. </p>
<p>The other major method of diamond manufacture is via a chemical-gas process which uses a small diamond as a “seed” to grow larger diamonds. Temperatures of about 800°C are required. While growth is quite slow, these diamonds can be grown large and relatively defect-free.</p>
<p>Nature has provided hints of other ways to form diamond, including during the violent impact of meteorites on Earth, as well as in processes such as high-speed asteroid collisions in our solar system - creating what we call “<a href="https://scitechdaily.com/largest-extraterrestrial-diamonds-ever-discovered-cosmic-diamonds-formed-during-gigantic-planetary-collisions/">extraterrestrial diamonds</a>”.</p>
<p>Scientists have been trying to understand exactly how impact or extraterrestrial diamonds form. There is some <a href="https://journals.aps.org/prb/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevB.98.014103">evidence</a> that, in addition to high temperatures and pressures, sliding forces (also known as “shear” forces) could play an important role in triggering their formation.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/370218/original/file-20201119-20-1si5ko.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Diagram explaining shear forces." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/370218/original/file-20201119-20-1si5ko.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/370218/original/file-20201119-20-1si5ko.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=637&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/370218/original/file-20201119-20-1si5ko.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=637&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/370218/original/file-20201119-20-1si5ko.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=637&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/370218/original/file-20201119-20-1si5ko.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/370218/original/file-20201119-20-1si5ko.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/370218/original/file-20201119-20-1si5ko.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In ‘shear’ forces, the object is pushed in one direction at one end, and the opposite direction at the other.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wiki Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>An object being impacted by shear forces is pushed in one direction at the top and the opposite direction at the bottom. </p>
<p>An example would be pushing a deck of cards to the left at the top and to the right at the bottom. This would force the deck to slide and the cards to spread out. Hence, shear forces are also called “sliding” forces. </p>
<h2>Making diamonds at room temperature</h2>
<p>For our work, we designed an experiment in which a small chip of graphite-like carbon was subjected to both extreme shear forces and high pressures, to encourage the formation of diamond.</p>
<p>Unlike most previous work on this front, no additional heating was applied to the carbon sample during compression. Using advanced electron microscopy — a technique used to capture very high-resolution images — the resulting sample was found to contain both regular diamond and Lonsdaleite. </p>
<p>In this never before seen arrangement, a thin “river” of diamond (about 200 times smaller than a human hair) was surrounded by a “sea” of Lonsdaleite. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/369996/original/file-20201118-17-60elab.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/369996/original/file-20201118-17-60elab.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/369996/original/file-20201118-17-60elab.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/369996/original/file-20201118-17-60elab.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/369996/original/file-20201118-17-60elab.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/369996/original/file-20201118-17-60elab.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/369996/original/file-20201118-17-60elab.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">This electron microscope image shows a ‘river’ of diamond in a ‘sea’ of Lonsdaleite.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The structure’s arrangement is reminiscent of “shear banding” observed in other materials, wherein a narrow area experiences intense, localised strain. This suggest shear forces were key to the formation of these diamonds at room temperature. </p>
<h2>Tough nuts to crack</h2>
<p>The ability to make diamonds at room temperature, in a matter of minutes, opens up numerous manufacturing possibilities. </p>
<p>Specifically, making the “harder than diamond” Lonsdaleite this way is exciting news for industries where extremely hard materials are needed. For example, diamond is used to coat drill bits and blades to extend these tools’ service life. </p>
<p>The next challenge for us is to lower the pressure required to form the diamonds. </p>
<p>In our research, the lowest pressure at room temperature where diamonds were observed to have formed was 80 gigapascals. This is the equivalent of 640 African elephants on the tip of one ballet shoe! </p>
<p>If both diamond and Lonsdaleite could be made at lower pressures, we could make more of it, quicker and cheaper.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/our-ability-to-manufacture-minerals-could-transform-the-gem-market-medical-industries-and-even-help-suck-carbon-from-the-air-123853">Our ability to manufacture minerals could transform the gem market, medical industries and even help suck carbon from the air</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/150369/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Dougal McCulloch receives funding from the Australian Research Council (ARC)</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jodie Bradby receives funding from The Australian Research Council. </span></em></p>Our research marks the first case of both normal diamonds, as well as Londaleite, being produced in a lab setting using only intense pressure.Dougal McCulloch, Professor, RMIT UniversityJodie Bradby, Professor of Physics, Australian National UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1293332020-01-14T13:48:25Z2020-01-14T13:48:25Z‘Uncut Gems’ celebrates Manhattan’s Diamond District, a neighborhood that’s a window into the past<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/309734/original/file-20200113-103954-14t68el.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A diamond wholesaler displays two three-carat diamonds in Manhattan's Diamond District.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/AP-A-NY-USA-DIAMOND-DISTRICT/f7a26d1f947744b0940390ec173eb574/38/0">AP Photo/Kathy Willens</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In “<a href="https://a24films.com/films/uncut-gems">Uncut Gems</a>,” an overleveraged diamond jeweler named Howard Ratner, played by Adam Sandler, frantically tries to cover his bad business bets by making bigger ones. </p>
<p>The film brilliantly captures the manic energy of New York City’s Diamond District, a bustling commercial stretch on Manhattan’s 47th Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenue. A preserve for the barter economy and the transaction sealed by a handshake, this small slice of the city has sustained a unique way of life.</p>
<p>It has survived urban decay, revitalization and gentrification. It has withstood the rise of modern finance and e-commerce, resisted economic booms and busts, and adapted to the ebbs and flows of global migration. </p>
<p>In my book “<a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674972179">Stateless Commerce: The Diamond Network and the Persistence of Relational Exchange</a>,” I explore how New York’s Diamond District seems to withstand the forces of economic change. I found that the mechanisms of a pre-modern economy are precisely the devices that allow diamond merchants to thrive in the 21st century.</p>
<h2>A 17th-century industry in a 21st-century city</h2>
<p>From the mid-19th century until the 1920s, New York’s diamond epicenter was Maiden Lane, four blocks north of Wall Street. When wealthier banks started driving up downtown rents in the 1920s, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/31/realestate/31scap.html">diamond businesses started moving uptown to 47th Street</a>. </p>
<p>Forty-seventh Street’s significance grew substantially as refugee diamond merchants fled to New York during World War II. When Belgium and Israel <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=349040">established themselves as post-WWII diamond hubs</a>, the industry for decades was dominated by Jewish merchants triangulating from Antwerp, Tel Aviv and New York. A visitor in the 1970s would have heard as much Yiddish and Hebrew as American English. Starting in the 1990s, <a href="https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/bb4c/78fd9b3e2c512af09e469758dc6280b5405e.pdf">a surge of Indian diamond merchants</a> entered the industry, eventually making Mumbai the unquestioned capital of today’s diamond world. </p>
<p>Even as the faces have changed, business practices have remained the same. The New York Times in 2001 <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/08/business/the-diamond-game-shedding-its-mystery.html">described 47th Street</a> as “an anachronism, a 17th-century industry smack in the middle of a 21st-century city.” And an ethnographer of 47th Street <a href="https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9780801439896/diamond-stories/">once said</a> that the diamond industry allows its residents “to mix in and stay apart, [to] adapt to new times in ways that are both modern and traditional, indeed ancient.” </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/309735/original/file-20200113-103971-1qma7d5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/309735/original/file-20200113-103971-1qma7d5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=479&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/309735/original/file-20200113-103971-1qma7d5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=479&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/309735/original/file-20200113-103971-1qma7d5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=479&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/309735/original/file-20200113-103971-1qma7d5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=602&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/309735/original/file-20200113-103971-1qma7d5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=602&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/309735/original/file-20200113-103971-1qma7d5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=602&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Three men converse in Manhattan’s Diamond District.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/three-men-conversing-on-a-sidewalk-in-the-diamond-district-news-photo/174011279">Frederick Kelly/The New York Historical Society/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The district’s endurance is remarkable. It withstood the area’s decline in the 1970s and 1980s, a period when Times Square – just a few blocks west of the district – was home to a high crime rate, peep shows and what Rolling Stone <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2016/04/18/us/80s-times-square-then-and-now/index.html">called</a> “the sleaziest block in America.” </p>
<p>More recently, the district has survived the area’s rapid gentrification. The district remains an island of cramped retail space and backroom manufacturing even as Manhattan commercial rents <a href="https://www.crainsnewyork.com/real-estate/manhattan-office-rents-reach-historic-high-cbre">reach historic highs</a>. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJYU6alFZmE&feature=youtu.be">Visit 47th Street today</a>, and the stylish pedestrians of Fifth and Sixth Avenues vanish. In their place are elderly, ultra-Orthodox Jews wearing black overcoats and fedoras; south and central Asians with traditional karakul hats; and gaggles of merchants shouting in languages from across the world.</p>
<p>Diamond merchants – also known as “<a href="https://www.yourdictionary.com/diamantaire">diamantaires</a>” – openly do business on the sidewalk, negotiating terms for bundles of gemstones as if they were fruit in an open-air market. Others bark on cellphones and hold briefcases handcuffed to their wrists, sealing deals <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/26/magazine/the-secret-slang-of-the-diamond-district.html">using lingo</a> that outsiders can’t comprehend. Jewelry salespeople peddle their products to passersby, luring customers in a way that evokes the merchants of an Old World bazaar.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/309739/original/file-20200113-103966-2x811z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/309739/original/file-20200113-103966-2x811z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/309739/original/file-20200113-103966-2x811z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/309739/original/file-20200113-103966-2x811z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/309739/original/file-20200113-103966-2x811z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/309739/original/file-20200113-103966-2x811z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/309739/original/file-20200113-103966-2x811z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Deals are made out in the open.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Associated-Press-Domestic-News-New-York-United-/ee7cd05f5fe5da11af9f0014c2589dfb/1/0">AP Photo/Mark Lennihan</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Massive risk – with no legal recourse</h2>
<p>How has the diamond district withstood the pressures of time?</p>
<p>It helps to understand <a href="https://poseidon01.ssrn.com/delivery.php?ID=845069121118112102089122031091089100034054008081016087100064097026124074076088026106117048061042052044115124016076071086019091112042011052088086087013065118115069003089023096003127066115114117002021088109083082105121111117084073003077105026019115068&EXT=pdf">the mechanics of a typical diamond transaction</a>. </p>
<p>Practically all diamonds on 47th street are new ones; very few come from pawns or estate sales. They arrive in New York by multiple pathways, but as an example: the diamond giant DeBeers mines stones in Africa and then sells them rough or uncut in London. These are resold in Antwerp. Then most go to Mumbai and Gujarat, India for polishing and cutting, before arriving at 47th Street, where they are then sold to dealers and jewelry manufacturers.</p>
<p>Forty-seventh Street is, in fact, a thick network of middlemen, with diamantaires buying and selling large caches of diamonds much like stock brokers buy and sell at the New York Stock Exchange. And since diamonds are so expensive – a pocketful of diamonds easily exceeds hundreds of thousands of dollars in value – diamantaires rarely have sufficient liquid assets to pay for stones in cash. So they rely on purchasing stones on credit.</p>
<p>But a credit sale exposes a diamond seller to an enormous financial risk. Because diamonds are portable, universally valuable and virtually untraceable, a would-be purchaser on credit could easily abscond with a cache of diamonds. Even if a thief skipped town, leaving assets behind that a jilted seller could recover, those assets would pale in value to lost diamonds.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/309741/original/file-20200113-103951-4kvh83.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/309741/original/file-20200113-103951-4kvh83.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=389&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/309741/original/file-20200113-103951-4kvh83.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=389&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/309741/original/file-20200113-103951-4kvh83.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=389&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/309741/original/file-20200113-103951-4kvh83.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=489&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/309741/original/file-20200113-103951-4kvh83.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=489&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/309741/original/file-20200113-103951-4kvh83.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=489&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A diamond cutter displays a tool used to determine the angles of a large emerald cut diamond.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/AP-A-NY-USA-DIAMOND-DISTRICT/18f69742ca9c44b9ac61610a4a79b0e4/30/0">AP Photo/Kathy Willens</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Though credit sales impose some risk on sellers in every business, other industries can use the law to secure their sales of expensive items. Banks attach liens on cars or mortgages on homes, which enable those lenders to recover the secured items if payment is missed. Bonds are routinely administered when expensive products arrive in ports of entry. Sellers are even given assurances by intermediaries for credit card purchases. These legal devices give sellers and lenders the assurance that they can recover funds from a cheating or overextended purchaser.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674972179">But none of these modern instruments are available to diamond sellers</a>, meaning that if a party were to cheat, there is no legal recourse. The law is of no use to diamond sellers, so they must operate outside the law.</p>
<h2>Your reputation is all your have</h2>
<p>If there’s no long arm of the law, what prevents theft and other forms of wrongdoing? </p>
<p>According to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1984/03/26/opinion/the-editorial-notebook-the-real-treasure-of-47th-street.html">a 1984 New York Times article</a>, diamantaires “trust each other not to walk away with the world’s most valuable, easily concealed commodity … They are protected from embezzling only by the character of those who transport.” The article concluded that mutual trust is “the real treasure” of the diamond industry.</p>
<p>A market defined by mutual trust is all well and good. But merchants know that blind trust is naive. They’re aware that the diamond industry – like all others – includes many Howard Ratners, and that trust only works when there are repercussions for bad behavior. </p>
<p>The true genius of the Diamond District, I discovered, is a reputation mechanism that rewards honest behavior and shuns merchants with a blemished record. </p>
<p>There are <a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674972179">two pillars that hold people accountable</a>.</p>
<p>First, the industry imposes economic sanctions on those who fail to uphold their financial obligations. A trade association publicizes to the entire industry the identities of anyone reported to have cheated, misallocated funds or exhibited any disreputable conduct. The formal mechanism is a bulletin board that – much like the “Wanted” posters in the Old West – displays pictures of individuals who haven’t paid their debts. Those whose faces appear on the wall are known to be in default and are shunned by the industry. Those who remain off the board and maintain an unblemished reputation are guaranteed a lifetime of lucrative business. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/309743/original/file-20200113-103963-u01wio.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/309743/original/file-20200113-103963-u01wio.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=455&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/309743/original/file-20200113-103963-u01wio.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=455&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/309743/original/file-20200113-103963-u01wio.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=455&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/309743/original/file-20200113-103963-u01wio.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=571&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/309743/original/file-20200113-103963-u01wio.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=571&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/309743/original/file-20200113-103963-u01wio.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=571&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An Egyptian jeweler named Ramses Said has been working at his family’s Diamond District business since he was 14 years old.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/NYC-Daily-Life/45bb592a6aec49749bf524881450097a/57/0">AP Photo/Richard Drew</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Second, families and communities police their own. Family businesses form the backbone of the industry, and reputations are bequeathed and inherited. Those who break the code of trust bring harm not only to their own reputation but also that of their family. The reputational stakes are high, since many plan to bequeath their lucrative businesses to their children. They’re also sources of employment for extended family and ethnic compatriots. Since families and communities have so much to gain by everyone behaving honorably, they bring shame and impose penalties to any of their own who cheat in the business.</p>
<p>The importance of business reputations explains why the industry has been able to sustain a pre-modern, pre-legal system. It allows old world commerce to outperform modern capitalism on its home turf – and the Diamond District is a reminder that family businesses and community enterprises still have a place in the 21st century.</p>
<p>[ <em>Deep knowledge, daily.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=deepknowledge">Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter</a>. ]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/129333/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Barak Richman does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Surrounded by skyscrapers and high-end boutiques, 47th Street continues to operate like an Old World bazaar, with million-dollar deals sealed by handshakes and insured by a family’s reputation.Barak Richman, Katharine T. Bartlett Professor of Law, Duke UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1261502019-11-06T13:22:56Z2019-11-06T13:22:56ZHow Masisi outsmarted Khama to take the reins in Botswana<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/300085/original/file-20191104-88428-77r7lj.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Mokgweetsi Masisi being sworn in as the elected President of Botswana by Chief Justice Terrence Rannowane. With him is his wife Neo. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Mmegi</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Mokgweetsi Masisi’s <a href="https://www.news24.com/Africa/News/botswanas-masisi-wins-hotly-contested-election-20191025">decisive victory</a> in the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/25/world/africa/botswana-election-mokgweetsi-masisi.html">recent Botswana elections</a> over a coalition backed by his former boss, Ian Khama, is the culmination of an astonishing 10 year political career. </p>
<p>Morphing from an obscure first-time MP in 2009 to a <a href="http://www.weekendpost.co.bw/wp-column-details.php?col_id=22">surprise </a> vice presidential appointment in 2014, and then <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/botswana-mokgweetsi-masisi-takes-over-presidency-amid-opposition-resurgence/a-43206610">president in 2018</a>, the man affectionately known as “Sisiboy” (a play on his surname) has wrested control of Botswana from the powerful Khama family. This he has achieved using tireless campaigning and <a href="https://www.facebook.com/TheGazettebw/posts/10156960929272620">“the rebirth of the Botswana Democratic Party”</a> (BDP).</p>
<p>The Khama lineage has dominated Botswana’s politics since the 1870s, right through the modern presidencies of Sir Seretse Khama (1966-1980) and Ian Khama (2008-2018). But they are now a discredited, spent force with <a href="https://ewn.co.za/2019/08/05/newly-formed-bpf-party-endorsed-by-khama-confident-of-electoral-victory">Ian Khama’s new party</a> having won only 5% of the vote.</p>
<p>The prosecution of Khama’s security chief, <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2019-01-18-botswana-arrests-ex-spy-boss">Isaac Kgosi</a>, and presidential secretary, <a href="https://www.mmegi.bw/index.php?aid=82492&dir=2019/september/03">Carter Morupisi</a>, following his assumption of power in 2018, showed that Masisi was no longer willing to tolerate <a href="https://www.zambianobserver.com/former-president-ian-khama-linked-to-billions-of-dollars-found-in-offshore-accounts-belonging-to-dis-agent-maswabi/">the widespread corruption</a> that flourished under his predecessor. Investigators continue to uncover allegations of <a href="https://www.mmegi.bw/index.php?aid=82441&dir=2019/august/30">shocking malfeasance</a>.</p>
<p>Masisi, 58, is on a mission to restore Botswana’s reputation as a beacon of clean governance on the continent, and is pouring resources and energy into that effort.</p>
<p>His ascent and success have surprised everybody. Even Khama <a href="https://inkjournalism.org/1904/turmoil-in-africas-model-democracy/">admitted</a> </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I have come to realise that I have maybe misjudged him. </p>
</blockquote>
<h2>The early days</h2>
<p>My own acquaintance with Masisi goes back to childhood, when we attended the same schools and played tennis at the same club. The last time I saw him was at a now defunct laundromat in northern Gaborone, in 1994. He was his usual friendly, well-mannered self, inquisitive and loquacious. Recently returned from completing his master’s degree in education at Florida State University, he was one of the co-owners of this faltering business. </p>
<p>Prior to going to Florida State, Masisi had worked on revamping Botswana’s social studies curriculum for its secondary schools, which he continued to do in the 1990s under the sponsorship of UNICEF. Knowing that the curriculum was a disaster (having no Botswana history at all and being full of outdated colonial and <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/bantu-education-and-racist-compartmentalizing-education">Bantu Education</a> myths), I doubted he could make meaningful changes. Whether he ever did or not, his early career in pedagogy undoubtedly led him to confront government dysfunction head on.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/botswanas-governing-party-wins-tight-election-but-biggest-tests-are-yet-to-come-125666">Botswana’s governing party wins tight election. But biggest tests are yet to come</a>
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<p>Gaborone in the 1970s and 80s was a small, intimate place, and Masisi grew up there surrounded by the families of the Botswana bureaucratic and business elite. Despite this somewhat privileged milieu and education, nothing about him then suggested that he would go on to become such an influential national politician. </p>
<p>Although his father, <a href="http://www.dailynews.gov.bw/news-details.php?nid=25372">Edison</a>, was a senior cabinet member, Masisi did not display the charisma of a <a href="https://maps.prodafrica.com/places/botswana/south-east-district/gaborone/monument-1/sir-seretse-khama-statue-gaborone-botswana/">Sir Seretse Khama</a>, the first president of independent Botswana. Neither did he show the technocratic brilliance of a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jul/18/ketumile-masire-obituary">Quett Masire</a>, who succeeded Seretse Khama as president in 1980; nor the emotional oratory of a <a href="http://www.sundaystandard.info/tribute-dk-kwelagobe-he-leaves-position-bdp-secretary-general-after-27-years">Daniel Kwelagobe</a>, the BDP chairman. Although Masisi today compares favourably to any of these political legends, none of this seemed evident in his youth.</p>
<p>He has always been easy to underestimate. Although a prefect at Gaborone’s <a href="https://www.thornhillprimary.ac.bw/">Thornhill</a> and <a href="https://www.facebook.com/pg/maruapula/posts/">Maru A Pula</a> private schools, he was not a standout personality. Strong in humanities rather than the sciences, he was a middling student. Similar things could be said about his teenage sports career, during which he never showed the same tenacity and killer instinct on the tennis court that he has shown in politics. </p>
<h2>The ‘priest’</h2>
<p>Masisi’s greatest moment in his young life was when, at 20, he was cast as the <em>umfundisi</em> (priest) in a 1983 Gaborone theatrical adaptation of Alan Paton’s <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Cry-the-Beloved-Country-novel-by-Paton">“Cry the Beloved Country”</a>. Playing a much older man with grey hair, a shuffling gait, and a quavering voice, Masisi turned in a powerful performance that brought him a standing ovation from <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/alan-stewart-paton">Paton</a> himself and President Masire.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/299983/original/file-20191103-88394-1acw3ud.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/299983/original/file-20191103-88394-1acw3ud.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=806&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/299983/original/file-20191103-88394-1acw3ud.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=806&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/299983/original/file-20191103-88394-1acw3ud.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=806&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/299983/original/file-20191103-88394-1acw3ud.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1013&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/299983/original/file-20191103-88394-1acw3ud.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1013&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/299983/original/file-20191103-88394-1acw3ud.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1013&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The young Mokgweetsi Masisi.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.facebook.com/OfficialMasisi/photos/a.859647030770828/2432458980156284/?type=3&theater">Mokgweetsi Masisi FB page</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>While his acting career ended after a role in a highly forgettable <a href="https://www.bfi.org.uk/films-tv-people/4ce2b88ceeb37">straight-to-video feature</a>, his portrayal of the priest nevertheless presaged key themes of his future political life.</p>
<p>After leaving UNICEF in 2003 Masisi entered politics, but failed to win his father’s old seat in Moshupa, the family home 41km northwest of Gaborone. He then endured a period of <a href="https://www.facebook.com/OfficialMasisi/">“failure, illness, unemployment, being seen as unfit for certain things, scorn and ridicule”</a>. He relied on his <a href="https://yourbotswana.com/2018/11/04/president-masisi-clarifies-first-ladys-role/">newly-wed wife Neo’s</a> salary for a time. He nevertheless persevered and built up a following, while also welcoming the birth of his daughter, Atsile.</p>
<p>Masisi managed to win the governing BDP’s primary and general election, <a href="http://www.sundaystandard.info/family-affairs-within-botswana-parliament">landing in parliament in 2009</a>. Within two years he was in the cabinet. In 2014, President Ian Khama, <a href="https://www.mmegi.bw/index.php?aid=82441&dir=2019/august/30">looking for an inexperienced and pliable deputy</a>, appointed him vice-president.</p>
<p>Like the priest in Paton’s story who went to Johannesburg seeking his sister and son only to find a degraded and desperate situation, so Masisi found the central government and cabinet unrecognisable from the institutions that his late father had served so well in the past. With the BDP having been taken over by a coalition of Khama lackeys and “tenderpreneurs” – business people who enrich themselves, often dubiously, through government tenders – even the party’s founder, former President Masire, disowned it for <a href="https://www.academia.edu/33661982/President_Masires_Final_Message_to_Botswana">lacking the values and discipline of the original</a>. </p>
<p>Masisi’s role as vice-president was to serve as a short-term stopgap for Ian Khama’s <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2019/08/13/how-fredo-tragic-godfather-character-became-an-insult-wielded-by-trump/">Fredo-like</a> brother, Tshekedi. His looming appointment as Khama’s successor was highly unpopular inside and outside the party.</p>
<p>Ever since 1998, the BDP has transferred power from the president to the vice-president a year before the next general election. Masire did this for Mogae in 1998, who then did the same thing for Ian Khama in 2008.</p>
<h2>Outmanoeuvring the Khamas</h2>
<p>It is clear that former President Khama (66), like many others, underestimated his young vice-president. Masisi took advice in secret late-night sessions with former presidents Masire and Mogae as well as other veterans who despised “the New BDP” that Khama led.</p>
<p>Using their counsel, he attended party meetings across the entire country to build up his own constituency. Masisi <a href="https://www.mmegi.bw/index.php?aid=82441&dir=2019/august/30">described</a> his years as vice-president] as “brutal hell”, <a href="https://www.mmegi.bw/index.php?aid=82441&dir=2019/august/30">adding that</a></p>
<blockquote>
<p>I was the most abused vice-president.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Once Khama handed power to Masisi in April 2018, “Sisiboy” moved quickly onto the attack, arresting the despised Isaac Kgosi and installing his own supporters in key positions. Once the Khama brothers <a href="https://www.africanews.com/2019/06/01/botswana-ex-president-slams-successor-after-quitting-ruling-party//">defected to the opposition</a> ahead of the 2019 election, they and their supporters were thoroughly outworked by Masisi’s relentless campaign organisation. </p>
<p>The full story of how the underling Masisi prosecuted his silent war with Khama is one we must wait for. Ultimately, it is his energetic campaigning and <a href="http://www.sundaystandard.info/masiresque-masisi">his desire to bring back </a>the forgotten ethos and policies of the early BDP – of Seretse Khama and Masire – that won over the voters despite the defection of the Khamas.</p>
<p>Masisi now vows to reinvigorate Botswana’s stalled economy. In this regard his supporters expect him to show no less stamina than he did in the election.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/126150/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Barry Morton receives funding from Sir Ketumile Masire Foundation </span></em></p>The Khamas have dominated Botswana’s politics since the 1870s, but they are now a discredited, spent force.Barry Morton, Research Fellow, African Studies, Indiana UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1256662019-10-25T10:18:44Z2019-10-25T10:18:44ZBotswana’s governing party wins tight election. But biggest tests are yet to come<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/298708/original/file-20191025-173554-sy3fdz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=10%2C10%2C2286%2C1439&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The newly elected President of Botswana Mokgweetsi Masisi</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">JUSTIN LANE/EPA</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The Botswana Democratic Party, which has governed the country since independence in 1966, has retained power in one of the most competitive elections in the country’s 53-year post-independence history. It retained its parliamentary majority, winning <a href="https://theconversation.com/drafts/125666/edit#">at least 29 </a>of the 57 contestable seats in the National Assembly. </p>
<p>Botswana has a <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/0/first-past-post-voting-system/">first-past-the-post</a> electoral system in which a simple majority is required to win government. The southern African nation has a population of <a href="https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/print_bc.html">2,2 million</a>, of whom 900 000 were <a href="https://www.news24.com/Africa/News/botswana-awaits-results-in-cliffhanger-election-20191023">registered to vote</a>.</p>
<p>The Botswana Democratic Party was uniquely vulnerable in this election. The party faced a <a href="https://city-press.news24.com/News/change-is-coming-opposition-parties-are-optimistic-as-botswana-votes-20191023">surging opposition</a> as well as the fact that it had been weakened by an internal split between former President Ian Khama (66) and the newly-elected President Mokgweetsi Masisi (58).</p>
<p>Khama handed the presidency and party leadership to his then vice president Masisi in <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2019-06-07-00-ian-khama-and-the-post-presidential-blues">April 2018</a>, planning on a smooth succession of leadership.</p>
<p>But, the relationship turned sour the following month when Masisi <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2019-01-18-botswana-arrests-ex-spy-boss">fired</a> the intelligence agency chief Isaac Kgosi, an ally of Khama. A year later, Masisi <a href="https://theconversation.com/elephants-reduced-to-a-political-football-as-botswana-brings-back-hunting-117615">overturned</a> Khama’s ban on hunting elephants.</p>
<p>Khama subsequently quit the Botswana Democratic Party and endorsed the opposition, a manoeuvre that risked cleaving votes from the ruling party’s heartland in the Central District where Khama is leader of the Bamangwato chieftainship. Khama is the son of Sir Seretse Khama, the first President of an independent Botswana. His father led the country from <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-10-22/khama-family-botswana-political-royalty-faces-election-setback">1966 to 1980</a>.</p>
<p>Two major factors affected the outcome of the poll. The first was the crippling <a href="http://www.mmegi.bw/index.php?aid=83147&dir=2019/october/18">divisions</a> in the ranks of the opposition parties. The second was that the ruling party clung to power through, among other things, Masisi’s direct appeal to populism. </p>
<p>This included promising the military, police, and prison workers <a href="http://apanews.net/index.php/en/news/gamble-on-security-forces-salaries-could-backfire-for-botswana">salary increases</a> and ambitiously pledging to deliver <a href="https://www.mmegi.bw/index.php?aid=82032&dir=2019/august/02">new jobs</a> by building electric cars in Botswana. The party also benefited from the use of state media.</p>
<p>The governing party has retained power. But serious challenges lie ahead as it celebrates victory. At stake is Botswana’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/botswana-at-50-the-end-of-an-african-success-story-65349">glowing reputation for democracy and prosperity</a>.</p>
<h2>Poverty and inequality</h2>
<p>Botswana was one of the poorest countries <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=290791">in the world</a> at independence. The Botswana Democratic Party proved to be effective economic managers, drawing from the country’s vast wealth in diamond deposits. Diamonds account for 24% of the country’s <a href="https://tradingeconomics.com/botswana/gdp-from-mining">GDP</a> and 73% of its <a href="https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/2019/08/29/the-battle-of-botswanas-big-men">exports</a>. </p>
<p>Sir Seretse Khama played a <a href="https://theconversation.com/botswana-at-50-the-end-of-an-african-success-story-65349">crucial role</a> in attracting foreign aid and alliances. He depicted Botswana’s African majority rule as a prosperous alternative to the ideology of apartheid in South Africa. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/298709/original/file-20191025-173520-aio7cb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/298709/original/file-20191025-173520-aio7cb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=889&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/298709/original/file-20191025-173520-aio7cb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=889&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/298709/original/file-20191025-173520-aio7cb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=889&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/298709/original/file-20191025-173520-aio7cb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1118&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/298709/original/file-20191025-173520-aio7cb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1118&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/298709/original/file-20191025-173520-aio7cb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1118&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Former President of Botswana Ian Khama.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">EFE-EPA/ Felipe Trueba</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The party helped turn the country into the world’s fastest growing economy during its first four decades in power. But, the country’s <a href="https://www.worldbank.org/en/country/botswana/publication/botswana-poverty-assessment-december-2015">upper-middle income status</a> masks acute socio-economic disparities, high structural unemployment, and extreme poverty.</p>
<p>The state’s reliance on lucrative, but limited, export goods for revenue hinders more inclusive development. Botswana’s Gini index was measured at 53.3 in <a href="https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SI.POV.GINI?locations=BW">2015</a>, making it one of the most unequal societies in the world.</p>
<p>The country must also confront the long-term consequences of <a href="https://southerntimesafrica.com/site/news/botswana-hit-hard-by-climate-change-effects">climate change</a>. The government concedes Botswana’s food security is jeopardised by increasing crop failure and livestock mortality.</p>
<p>This is not a good time for Botswana to be dependent on diamonds, a finite resource vulnerable to global market downturns.</p>
<h2>Losing its sparkle</h2>
<p>Botswana’s democratic credentials are increasingly coming into question. It is yet to achieve a transfer of power from one party in government to another.</p>
<p>Khama willingly stood down as President at the end of his second term, as required by the Constitution. Nonetheless, the country must address the authoritarian legacies of his leadership style.</p>
<p>Khama’s government was accused of <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/10/02/its-not-just-elephants-that-are-under-attack-in-botswana-duma-boko-masisi-khama/">intimidating</a> the media and political opponents, <a href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2015/10/botswana-suspension-of-judges-potentially-threatens-freedom-of-expression-and-judicial-independence/">suspending</a> judges, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/10246029.2014.993667">enlarging</a> the powers of intelligence agencies, and sanctioning <a href="https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/2019/botswana">extra-judicial killings</a>. The new government should consider constitutional reforms to curb the executive powers of the Presidency and the potential for such abuses.</p>
<p>Botswana has effective institutional mechanisms to limit <a href="https://www.centreforpublicimpact.org/case-study/fighting-corruption-botswana/">corruption</a>. But, the image of accountability is weakened by the centralisation of key anti-corruption bodies within the office of the President.</p>
<p>Another challenge will be to open up the political system to under-represented groups. Women have been represented in less than 10% of the seats in the National Assembly since <a href="https://www.indexmundi.com/facts/botswana/indicator/SG.GEN.PARL.ZS">2014</a>. Minority ethnic groups, like the <a href="https://www.survivalinternational.org/news/11163">Basarwa</a>, do not have a sufficient platform to safeguard their interests.</p>
<p>The country was <a href="https://theconversation.com/botswana-court-ruling-is-a-ray-of-hope-for-lgbt-people-across-africa-118713">praised</a> by human rights groups after its High Court decriminalised gay sex in June. But the decision is being appealed by the country’s <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jul/06/botswana-government-to-appeal-against-law-legalising-gay-sex">attorney-general</a>. This raises doubts about the government’s commitment to upholding human rights. </p>
<h2>Looking to 2024</h2>
<p>There is an important lesson the Botswana Democratic Party can learn from the serious challenge it faced to its de facto one-party rule in the 2019 election. Political competition might just give the party some incentive to initiate policies that will benefit the unemployed and disadvantaged. This might help it retain power in future. </p>
<p>However, the personalised nature of the Masisi-Khama contest has somewhat distracted from core policy concerns and the needs of marginalised groups.</p>
<p>Unless that changes and the Botswana Democratic Party seriously addresses the country’s structural weaknesses, it may not survive another close contest in the 2024 general election. The Botswana Democratic Party’s biggest test is still to come.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/125666/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>James Kirby receives funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme, Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions, COFUND programme.</span></em></p>Serious challenges lie ahead for Botswana’s governing party as it celebrates retaining power.James Kirby, Junior Research Fellow, La Trobe UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1066652018-12-12T11:42:31Z2018-12-12T11:42:31ZDiamonds are forever – whether made in a lab or mined from the earth<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/250100/original/file-20181211-76959-fbhgqt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=169%2C33%2C4086%2C2806&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Are you in the market for some sparkle?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/great-background-image-lots-diamonds-46190779">clearviewstock/Shutterstock.com</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>It’s diamond season. <a href="http://publications.weddingwire.com/i/953286-weddingwire-2018-newlywed-report">Almost 40 percent of American engagements</a> happen between Thanksgiving and Valentine’s Day, with Christmas the most popular day to pop the question – and hand over a sparkly piece of ice. Jewelry stores do at least <a href="https://www.census.gov/retail/index.html">double their usual monthly sales in December</a>.</p>
<p>Since at least the late 1800s, with the <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1982/02/have-you-ever-tried-to-sell-a-diamond/304575/">discovery of huge diamond mines in South Africa</a>, people have treasured these dazzling gems. The beauty and splendor of diamonds goes well beyond the surface. Like a diamond hunter digging in an underground mine, one must look deeper to their atomic characteristics to understand what sets these stones apart – and what makes them valuable not just for romantics but also for scientists.</p>
<h2>On the atomic level</h2>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/249495/original/file-20181207-128202-bhm7sv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/249495/original/file-20181207-128202-bhm7sv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/249495/original/file-20181207-128202-bhm7sv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/249495/original/file-20181207-128202-bhm7sv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/249495/original/file-20181207-128202-bhm7sv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/249495/original/file-20181207-128202-bhm7sv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=568&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/249495/original/file-20181207-128202-bhm7sv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=568&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/249495/original/file-20181207-128202-bhm7sv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=568&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A literal diamond in the rough, before it’s been removed from the matrix within which it formed.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Rough_diamond.jpg">USGS</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>When mined from the earth, diamonds look like cloudy rocks before they’re cut and polished. Their chemical nature and structure were unknown for centuries. It was <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s10818-016-9241-8">Isaac Newton’s experiments in the 1600s</a> that first suggested diamonds are made up of the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1088/1742-6596/728/6/062004">fourth-most abundant element, carbon</a>.</p>
<p>People doubted Newton’s discovery, which is understandable considering how different diamonds look from other common forms of carbon, like the graphite in pencils or the ash left over in a wood-burning fireplace. But in 1797, English scientist Smithson Tennant <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/24949942">confirmed the composition of diamonds</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/249496/original/file-20181207-128190-1kvd31h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/249496/original/file-20181207-128190-1kvd31h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/249496/original/file-20181207-128190-1kvd31h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=447&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/249496/original/file-20181207-128190-1kvd31h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=447&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/249496/original/file-20181207-128190-1kvd31h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=447&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/249496/original/file-20181207-128190-1kvd31h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=562&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/249496/original/file-20181207-128190-1kvd31h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=562&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/249496/original/file-20181207-128190-1kvd31h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=562&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Diamond and graphite are both made of carbon atoms, but organized in different structures.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Diamond_and_graphite2.jpg">Materialscientist/Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It turns out that carbon takes two common forms that have crystalline structures on the atomic level. Graphite is a repeating two-dimensional, honeycomb-like shape, with layers stacking on top of each other. Alternatively, carbon can form a repeating three-dimensional shape, a tetrahedron – and that’s your diamond. </p>
<h2>Where do they come from?</h2>
<p>There are two sources of the precious gemstone: natural mining or synthesis within a laboratory.</p>
<p><iframe id="WXvk7" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/WXvk7/2/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p>Natural diamonds are formed under intense pressure and heat in the Earth’s crust over millions of years. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s10818-016-9241-8">Natural deposits have been found all over the world</a>, from Northern Canada to Western Australia, even underwater in Namibia.</p>
<p>Mines were the only source of the gemstone until 1955, when General Electric produced the first synthetic diamond using what’s called the <a href="https://www.gia.edu/gems-gemology/fall-2017-observations-hpht-grown-synthetic-diamonds">high-pressure, high-temperature process</a>. This process works by applying hundreds of thousands pounds of pressure to graphite at 2,700 degrees Fahrenheit to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s10818-016-9241-8">force the carbon into the correct crystalline structure</a>. It’s sort of like an artificial version of the extreme conditions that produce diamonds deep within the earth.</p>
<p>In the 1970s, labs started to use the chemical vapor deposition method to grow diamonds at lower pressures. At the time, the HPHT technique couldn’t produce a gem-quality stone. This improved method converts a hydrocarbon gas mixture by breaking it down to its components, carbon and hydrogen molecules, with an intense heated filament or plasma and deposits it onto a substrate, ultimately forming a solid diamond. Originally, this process had a very slow growth rate, but it’s now optimized to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1557/S0883769400061480">grow quality diamonds within days</a>.</p>
<p>Together these techniques are largely responsible for human-made diamonds – upwards of <a href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/280216/global-synthetic-diamond-production/">4 billion carats worldwide annually</a>.</p>
<p>There’s a common misconception that a natural diamond must be inherently different than a synthetic diamond. To the contrary, they are chemically identical and share the same physical properties. Even the most sophisticated techniques can not detect a difference between a flawless mined diamond and a flawless human-made diamond – both are “real” diamonds. However, truly flawless diamonds of either type are extremely scarce.</p>
<h2>Assessing a diamond</h2>
<p>No matter its origin, a diamond can be assessed by the “four Cs” of cut, color, clarity and carat weight. Specialized laboratories grade each category, as created by the Gemological Institute of America.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/250102/original/file-20181211-76980-13b3err.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/250102/original/file-20181211-76980-13b3err.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/250102/original/file-20181211-76980-13b3err.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=318&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/250102/original/file-20181211-76980-13b3err.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=318&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/250102/original/file-20181211-76980-13b3err.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=318&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/250102/original/file-20181211-76980-13b3err.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/250102/original/file-20181211-76980-13b3err.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/250102/original/file-20181211-76980-13b3err.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Diamond cutters choose the shape of the finished stone.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-illustration/twenty-one-various-diamond-shapes-cut-739328245">SPbPhoto/Shutterstock.com</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1475-3995.2005.00516.x">The cut of a diamond</a> is defined in two ways. There’s “the general shape of the cut stone,” with shapes including round brilliant (most common), oval, emerald, pear, princess, trilliant, triangle, heart and radiant. And there’s “the degree of perfection achieved by the cutting and polishing process” as rated on a scale ranging from excellent to poor. The type and quality of the cut ultimately determines the way light reflects in the stone, contributing to its “brilliance.” </p>
<p><a href="https://www.gia.edu/doc/Coloring-Grading-D-to-Z-Diamonds-at-the-GIA-Laboratory.pdf">The color of a diamond</a> is graded on a scale from “D,” being perfectly colorless, to “Z” having the most color. Originally, the color of the stone was a huge hint about how it was formed because until 2007 about <a href="https://www.gia.edu/gems-gemology/fall-2017-observations-hpht-grown-synthetic-diamonds">90 percent</a> of the high-pressure, high-temperature synthetic stones were yellow orange or yellow. Almost no stones from that process were colorless, so a colorless stone was almost certainly natural. But the HPHT growing process has greatly improved and as of 2016, <a href="https://www.gia.edu/gems-gemology/fall-2017-observations-hpht-grown-synthetic-diamonds">43 percent</a> of synthetic diamonds were colorless.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.gia.edu/gia-about/4cs-clarity">Diamond clarity</a> indicates the presence of inclusions, or tiny imperfections, in the stone. Inclusions make every diamond unique and provide strong clues to whether a diamond is natural or synthetic. The HPHT process <a href="https://www.gia.edu/gems-gemology/fall-2017-observations-hpht-grown-synthetic-diamonds">uses metal flux</a>, or a hot metal liquid, which acts as a solvent to dissolve the carbon source, graphite, to be rearranged and grown into a diamond. Diamonds grown this way can have inclusions of metals. The resulting stones may be magnetic – if a diamond reacts with a magnet, it is certainly synthetic. Additionally, most synthetic diamonds receive high clarity grades, while natural diamonds contain larger inclusions. </p>
<p>Many consumers focus on <a href="https://4cs.gia.edu/en-us/blog/gia-diamond-grading-reports-understanding-carat-weight/">carat weight</a> – that is, diamond size. The stone is weighed on a scale where one carat is 200 milligrams (0.007 ounces). Diamonds larger than four carats are almost guaranteed to be natural because that’s the limit for the size of the diamonds that the synthetic processes can grow.</p>
<p>Although the “four Cs” of diamonds ultimately define retail value, sentimental value can be even greater. Buyers must decide if a natural or synthetic stone fits the bill for them, based on factors that might include the <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/millennials-want-cheap-ethical-diamond-engagement-rings-2018-5">ecological and ethical ramifications</a> of diamond mining as well as the lower price tag for synthetic rocks. </p>
<h2>Diamonds found beyond your ring finger</h2>
<p>Although diamonds are well known for their place in the jewelry industry, they play other valuable roles, too.</p>
<p>Their physical properties, especially hardness, are ideal for abrasive applications. Small diamonds can be found <a href="http://pdc-guru.com/uploads/2/8/7/9/2879895/daw_d-scott_history-and-impact-of-synthetic-diamond-cutters-in-og.pdf">coating cutting wheels, drill bits and grinding wheels</a>, which are used for cutting concrete or brickwork.</p>
<p>Diamonds also have certain optical properties that make them suitable for various spectroscopy techniques, or measurements involving the electromagnetic spectrum. Scientific researchers use these tests to help identify the composition of materials they’re investigating.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/249851/original/file-20181210-76977-1s1d3uc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/249851/original/file-20181210-76977-1s1d3uc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/249851/original/file-20181210-76977-1s1d3uc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/249851/original/file-20181210-76977-1s1d3uc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/249851/original/file-20181210-76977-1s1d3uc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/249851/original/file-20181210-76977-1s1d3uc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/249851/original/file-20181210-76977-1s1d3uc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/249851/original/file-20181210-76977-1s1d3uc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A diamond needle is what’s in contact with the grooves on a record.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/hawkins-thiel/3235580260/">Michelle Hawkins-Thiel/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>A previously common place for diamonds was on record players, where to this day the <a href="https://patents.google.com/patent/US3902340A/en">needle that touches the record</a> can be a very small diamond sliver.</p>
<p>Whether one appreciates the aesthetic or scientific characteristics of the gem more, diamonds can dazzle.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/106665/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Whether forged by geological processes or laboratory techniques, diamonds are diamonds. Their unique properties mean they have applications that are not bling-related as well.Joshua Wilhide, Manager of the Molecular Characterization and Analysis Complex, University of Maryland, Baltimore CountyWilliam LaCourse, Professor of Chemistry and Dean of the College of Natural and Mathematical Sciences, University of Maryland, Baltimore CountyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/975582018-06-01T09:08:51Z2018-06-01T09:08:51ZDe Beers to sell synthetic diamonds: here’s how they’re made<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/221330/original/file-20180601-142072-yljsz7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/closeup-person-looking-diamond-magnifying-loupe-299702750?src=ivbQaATAgDWpNqjFSbXrXg-1-80">Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The world’s biggest diamond company, De Beers, <a href="http://www.debeersgroup.com/en/news/company-news/company-news/de-beers-group-to-launch-new-fashion-jewelry-brand-with-laborato.html">recently announced</a> it would start selling synthetic diamond gemstones for the first time in its 130-year history. Artificial diamonds have been manufactured <a href="https://www.ge.com/reports/post/119548896365/diamonds-werent-forever-in-the-ge-store-but/">since the 1950s</a> but De Beers has long resisted moving into the synthetic market. The company now believes that technology is efficient enough to produce large quantities of synthetic diamonds with the quality of the best gemstones. How exactly does this process work?</p>
<p>Diamond is highly valued as a transparent gemstone that sparkles like no other. It is also one of the hardest of all materials and feels cold to the touch. All of these remarkable attributes depend on the perfectly regular arrangement of atoms inside the diamond crystal and all these atoms are exactly the same – they are carbon.</p>
<p>Tiny imperfections in this arrangement, whether an atom that’s in the wrong place, missing or of a different element, can lead to huge changes in the diamond’s colour. For example, replacing one carbon atom in every 10,000 with a nitrogen atom would turn a <a href="https://www.gia.edu/gems-gemology/fall-2017-observations-hpht-grown-synthetic-diamonds">transparent gemstone brown</a>.</p>
<p>Getting carbon atoms to arrange in this perfect crystal is not easy and it cannot happen naturally on the Earth’s surface since carbon here prefers to form crystals of graphite, the soft black, material we use in pencil leads. In this environment, carbon atoms also tend to attach more easily to other atoms such as oxygen and hydrogen than to each other. This means that even making pure graphite crystals is difficult.</p>
<figure> <img src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/22/Diamond_Cubic-F_lattice_animation.gif"><figcaption>‘Diamond structure’.</figcaption></figure>
<p>Natural diamonds are made deep inside the Earth where, very rarely, the right ingredients at the right temperature and pressure are brought together and then transported to the surface over <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/diamonds-unearthed-141629226/">millions of years</a>. The first artificial diamonds were made in the laboratory by replicating these conditions in huge machines, and this is still the way that small diamonds for industrial cutting tools <a href="http://www.e6.com/en/Home/Materials+and+products/Synthetic+diamond+grits+and+powders/">are made today</a>.</p>
<p>It is also possible to make high-quality artificial diamond crystals by growing layers of carbon atoms one at a time using methane. This is done by stripping hydrogen away from methane molecules in super-clean vessels <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-south-east-wales-44152735">using hot plasmas</a>. All the carbon is then forced to grow into diamond crystals, rather than into one of the many other types of carbon such as graphite, graphene or <a href="https://www.popsci.com/buckyball-magic-molecule">buckminster fullerene</a> (unless of course you want to <a href="https://www.aber.ac.uk/en/news/archive/2013/03/title-127626-en.html">grow combinations</a> of these very different materials).</p>
<figure>
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<p>The challenge is to make this process, known as chemical vapour deposition (CVD) cost-effective. De Beers now believes it has reached this point and <a href="http://www.debeersgroup.com/en/news/company-news/company-news/de-beers-group-to-launch-new-fashion-jewelry-brand-with-laborato.html">plans to extend production</a> at its facility in Ascot in the UK and at a new diamond factory in the USA.</p>
<p>Controlling the purity of these crystals also opens up new opportunities for using diamond. For example, it’s possible to use each atomic impurity as a tiny torch that produces a single particle of light free from interference from its neighbouring atoms in the crystal. This can be used to store a single bit of information for a special <a href="http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20130218-diamond-idea-for-quantum-computer">“quantum” computer</a>. Impurities of boron, as well as producing valued deep <a href="http://www.webexhibits.org/causesofcolor/11.html">blue or black diamonds</a>, are used to make diamonds that conduct electricity, providing an alternative material to silicon or metals in extreme conditions such as in space.</p>
<p>Each natural diamond carries clues about its unique history and it is possible to reveal its origin by inspecting it with the latest instruments. Artificial diamonds also carry this information and differences in the way they <a href="http://4cs.gia.edu/en-us/blog/diamond-fluorescence-good-bad">glow in ultraviolet light</a> are regularly used to distinguish natural from synthetic gemstones. So even if the diamond’s perfection can’t be questioned by the human eye, their tiny imperfections are always there to reveal their hidden histories and their individuality.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/97558/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Andrew Evans receives funding from EPSRC, the EU(WEFO) and Element Six.</span></em></p>The world’s biggest diamond company is to sell synthetic gemstones for the first time.Andrew Evans, Professor of Materials Physics, Aberystwyth UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/963652018-05-23T13:16:45Z2018-05-23T13:16:45ZHow the wealth from Sierra Leone’s diamonds fails to enrich local communities<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/220118/original/file-20180523-51115-1xdv42f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Diamond hunting.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Roy Maconachie and Simon Wharf</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Ever since diamonds were discovered in Sierra Leone in the 1930s, they have had a significant impact on the country – socially, politically and economically. This is partly to do with how they are extracted from the ground.</p>
<p>In countries in southern Africa, diamond mining is mostly undertaken by large-scale, mechanised companies, which monitor and control deep reserves. But in Sierra Leone, diamonds are more commonly dispersed close to the surface of river beds. They can be found by anyone with a shovel and a sieve. </p>
<p>This accessibility has made Sierra Leone’s diamond-rich Kono district a magnet for migrant workers – mostly young, single, uneducated, unemployed men seeking their fortunes. <a href="http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/607311509663221201/pdf/Concept-Project-Information-Document-Integrated-Safeguards-Data-Sheet.pdf">World Bank estimates</a> suggest the artisanal diamond mining sector is now Sierra Leone’s second largest employer (after agriculture), providing a livelihood for between 300,000 and 400,000 people.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/220127/original/file-20180523-51102-1iillta.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/220127/original/file-20180523-51102-1iillta.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/220127/original/file-20180523-51102-1iillta.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/220127/original/file-20180523-51102-1iillta.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/220127/original/file-20180523-51102-1iillta.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/220127/original/file-20180523-51102-1iillta.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/220127/original/file-20180523-51102-1iillta.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Dirty work.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Roy Maconachie and Simon Wharf</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Since 2003, I have been carrying out <a href="http://www.bath.ac.uk/cds/projects-activities/mapping-flows/index.html">research</a> in Kono, looking into the challenges of the diamond mining sector, and its problems of exploitation and poverty. My <a href="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=http://www.bath.ac.uk/case-studies/unearthing-the-voices-of-the-mine/&source=gmail&ust=1527161993560000&usg=AFQjCNF_1x7zRHxmFyJoNMrCspS7pftHsg">most recent project</a>, funded by the US foundation <a href="https://humanityunited.org/">Humanity United</a>, aims to shed some light on the challenges of natural resource governance, and converting revenues into sustainable development.</p>
<p>Despite the non-mechanical and non-regulated nature of artisanal diamond extraction in Sierra Leone, there is still a tightly managed, highly ordered structure to production. Typically, gangs of labourers will work together in small areas, digging up gravel, and transporting and washing it. A different group of people will supply the miners with food and tools while they do this – but no payment will be offered unless diamonds are found. </p>
<p>This highly unequal relationship between diggers and “supporters” has led to serious concerns over the detrimental social impact of diamond mining in Sierra Leone. It has even been <a href="http://www.ddiglobal.org/login/resources/pda-kono-district.pdf">described</a> as a “system of debt bondage and a contemporary form of slavery”. One local expert told me: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Everybody is doing business to maximise profit … [by suppressing] those that are below.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Yet the artisanal diamond mining sector still has an important role to play in driving local economic development in rural areas. It supports hundreds of thousands of poor people, supplying valuable start-up capital for other economic activities, and helping to nourish smallholder agriculture. </p>
<p>Generally, though, Sierra Leone’s wealth of natural resources – gold, iron ore, bauxite and rutile – has not translated into better living conditions for its people. In fact, the opposite has been true. </p>
<figure>
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<p>The <a href="http://undp.org">United Nations Development Programme</a> places Sierra Leone at the bottom of its <a href="http://hdr.undp.org/en/content/human-development-index-hdi">Human Development Index</a>. It is one of the world’s poorest nations and lags well behind most on social development.</p>
<p>Ravaged for years by war, and battered more recently by the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2014/nov/04/ebola-sierra-leone-small-scale-mining-sector-catastropic-consequences">Ebola crisis</a>, economic development has come to a grinding halt through a combination of corruption, revenue mismanagement and misfortune. </p>
<p>Diamonds are clearly linked to Sierra Leone’s underdevelopment. Small, transportable and extremely valuable, they played a major role in funding the country’s <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-14094419">brutal civil war</a> of the 1990s. And the informal nature of the industry in Sierra Leone makes it easy for local communities to miss out on any related economic benefits. </p>
<p>Diamond mining remains one of Sierra Leone’s most lucrative export industries, with annual production of up to US$250m. But due to poor governance and widespread corruption, only a fraction of this wealth returns to the areas where diamonds are mined. </p>
<h2>For richer, for poorer</h2>
<p>While international traders reap vast rewards, poverty and hardship is the reality for many of those who actually find the diamonds. Many mining operations take place in remote locations outside the reach of government monitors, and in close proximity to the porous borders with Guinea and Liberia.</p>
<p>The unregulated nature of the artisanal mining sector means that many diamond diggers end up in exploitative relationships with buyers and middlemen. They become trapped in cycles of poverty and indebtedness. While some effort has been made to address this exploitation, and empower unregistered miners and their families at the bottom of the supply chain, more needs to be done. <a href="http://www.ddiglobal.org/">Some have argued</a> that the keys to making the sector more sustainable are formalisation and better local governance. </p>
<p>Yet most mining activity still takes place informally – a situation driven by the many vested interests in the sector. Too many people are benefiting from the informal and unregulated conditions that currently exist.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/220119/original/file-20180523-51095-mkl9u5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/220119/original/file-20180523-51095-mkl9u5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/220119/original/file-20180523-51095-mkl9u5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/220119/original/file-20180523-51095-mkl9u5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/220119/original/file-20180523-51095-mkl9u5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/220119/original/file-20180523-51095-mkl9u5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/220119/original/file-20180523-51095-mkl9u5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">What’s mined is yours.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Roy Maconachie and Simon Wharf</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>If the government and policy-makers of Sierra Leone wish to address the poverty and inequality of diamond mining, a more nuanced understanding of the realities in these mining communities is needed. </p>
<p>Artisanal mining will likely remain a dominant industry in Sierra Leone for many years to come. But it is an industry which has always been characterised by exploitation and poverty. </p>
<p>Addressing the challenges of local-level governance, and how power is exercised over diamond management and decision-making is vital. It is the only way to ensure that more of the wealth remains where it begins – in the communities where the diamonds are being mined.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/96365/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Roy Maconachie has received funding from Humanity United, which has financially supported his most recent research project in Sierra Leone.</span></em></p>The diamonds and dollars soon disappear from view.Roy Maconachie, Reader in International Development, University of BathLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/944082018-04-05T02:30:49Z2018-04-05T02:30:49ZFrom ‘good temper and pluck’ to fierce international rivalry: the story of netball<p>Commonwealth Games netball is effectively a proxy world championship. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.gc2018.com/article/upsets-expected-competitive-netball-field">In the 2018 lineup</a> of 12 competing teams are world champs Australia (the <a href="https://netball.com.au/team/2018-quad-series-team/">Diamonds</a>), world runners up New Zealand (the <a href="https://www.silverferns.co.nz/">Silver Ferns</a>) and the remaining teams that make up the <a href="http://netball.org/events-and-results/current-world-rankings">world’s top ten ranked countries</a>. </p>
<p>The Australia – New Zealand rivalry has a long history of close clashes. Incredibly fit, the women are physically strong and up to 188cm (over 6 feet) tall. They put their bodies on the line to win. </p>
<p>But that’s not how netball started. It was <a href="http://library.la84.org/SportsLibrary/SportingTraditions/2001/st1801/ST1801i.pdf">designed as a game</a> that allowed women to wear modest clothing, and that did not place undue physical, competitive or moral demands on players. </p>
<p>It’s a bit different now. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/can-the-commonwealth-games-change-perceptions-of-the-gold-coast-94170">Can the Commonwealth Games change perceptions of the Gold Coast?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Like basketball, but different</h2>
<p>The sport of netball is an English invention that traces its roots to basketball. </p>
<p>In 1891 an American physical educator, <a href="https://www.biography.com/people/james-a-naismith-9420059">James Naismith</a>, created the court and ball game we now know as basketball. It was designed for students linked to the Young Men’s Christian Association, or YMCA. </p>
<p>However, at the time women’s dress conventions of ankle length skirts and wrist length shirts <a href="http://library.la84.org/SportsLibrary/SportingTraditions/2001/st1801/ST1801i.pdf">hindered their physical movements</a>, and meant that playing basketball with dribbling, and throwing long passes was difficult.</p>
<p>So some female educators formed a modified version of the game. Instead of changing the female attire to fit the needs of the basketball rules, they modified the game to fit within the accepted feminine practices. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/213077/original/file-20180404-189827-1p88prl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/213077/original/file-20180404-189827-1p88prl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=370&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/213077/original/file-20180404-189827-1p88prl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=370&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/213077/original/file-20180404-189827-1p88prl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=370&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/213077/original/file-20180404-189827-1p88prl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=465&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/213077/original/file-20180404-189827-1p88prl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=465&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/213077/original/file-20180404-189827-1p88prl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=465&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Glennie School netball team, Toowoomba, Queensland, 1924.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/statelibraryqueensland/39750259215/in/photolist-GMYJi3-23yAtbP-7Ndod6-GMYJsm">statelibraryqueensland/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Women’s basketball, as netball was originally known, emerged as an identifiable sport in the late 1890s when the rules of dribbling were omitted, and the inaugural “<a href="http://library.la84.org/SportsLibrary/SportingTraditions/1991/st0801/st0801e.pdf">rules for women’s basketball</a>” were established. Under these rules the court was divided into three zones, the number of players were increased from five to nine, a smaller ball was used, and there were two umpires, two scorers and two timekeepers.</p>
<p>The modern game of netball still features three zones and two umpires, but has seven players on court. </p>
<h2>Netball reaches Australia</h2>
<p>Netball – then still known as women’s basketball – was introduced to Australian women in the <a href="http://library.la84.org/SportsLibrary/SportingTraditions/2001/st1801/ST1801i.pdf">late 1890s</a>, when games were first played in school around Melbourne. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/213075/original/file-20180404-189807-15tauw1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/213075/original/file-20180404-189807-15tauw1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=770&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/213075/original/file-20180404-189807-15tauw1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=770&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/213075/original/file-20180404-189807-15tauw1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=770&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/213075/original/file-20180404-189807-15tauw1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=968&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/213075/original/file-20180404-189807-15tauw1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=968&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/213075/original/file-20180404-189807-15tauw1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=968&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Netball players in action in Brisbane, circa 1940.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/statelibraryqueensland/4461115477/">statelibraryqueensland/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA) – the sister organisation of the YMCA – was instrumental in progressing the game in Australia during the early part of the 20th century. YWCA introduced netball to school children, and also formed women’s competitions in the <a href="https://opus.lib.uts.edu.au/bitstream/10453/19822/1/lstwp2.pdf">broader community</a>. </p>
<p>Early Australian versions of the game were played with <a href="http://library.la84.org/SportsLibrary/SportingTraditions/2001/st1801/ST1801i.pdf">makeshift equipment</a> including broomsticks, wet paper bags, and washing baskets. The rules were also flexible, and often passed on via word of mouth from those who had prior experience in playing the game. </p>
<p>Netball was initially played indoors but <a href="http://library.la84.org/SportsLibrary/SportingTraditions/1991/st0801/st0801e.pdf">soon included outdoor matches</a> as the number of participants were outgrowing the venues they were originally playing in. Outdoor courts were an important contributor to the game’s early growth since they were easy to construct, and not costly to maintain.</p>
<h2>A game for women</h2>
<p>Netball was introduced into Australia as a preferred alternative to women’s field hockey. This occurred on the grounds that it was less demanding, had less “rough and tumble”, and was perceived as a less masculine activity for young girls. Netball was viewed as an <a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/9781134870141">ideal women’s game</a> since it did not require excessive strength, aggression, or physical exertion.</p>
<p>The belief that netball was not overly competitive and was played with a cooperative and “ladylike” spirit reflected the <a href="http://library.la84.org/SportsLibrary/SportingTraditions/2001/st1801/ST1801i.pdf">accepted notion of femininity of the time</a>. Netball was seen as a space for the socialisation of women within specific behavioural boundaries, and as a means through which to develop sound morals, strong leadership and exemplary citizenship. It aimed to instil a set of values that emphasised respectability and polite behaviour. </p>
<p>A 1916 publication on the game <a href="http://library.la84.org/SportsLibrary/SportingTraditions/2001/st1801/ST1801i.pdf">stated</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>good temper, pluck, determination, extreme agility of mind and body, are traits universally found among Net-Ball players, and best of all perhaps, that inexpressibility happy attitude, esprit de corps. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>It was assumed that netball would socialise women into the norms, values, and manners of middle-class culture. These elements made the sport an acceptable past-time hobby for women to engage with, since it did not challenge ideals regarding femininity and competitiveness. </p>
<p>The idea that netball is a women’s game is still evident in the beliefs of many Australians.</p>
<h2>No threat to men</h2>
<p>From the outset, netball was developed and promulgated <a href="http://library.la84.org/SportsLibrary/SportingTraditions/2001/st1801/ST1801i.pdf">without male association or supervision</a>. </p>
<p>The control of teams and competitions remained with women, and men were denied participation as players, coaches and umpires. Women were also selected for all the major management or administration positions. The consensus was that women’s interests would be best served by limiting the game’s administration to women only.</p>
<p>Netball has been highly feminised from its beginnings. With men excluded from the netball scene, some believe this actually advantaged netball’s development. It meant that netball was isolated from male sporting arenas, and <a href="https://opus.lib.uts.edu.au/bitstream/10453/19822/1/lstwp2.pdf">did not intrude</a> on the sacred spaces of male-dominated sports such as soccer, cricket, rugby codes and Australian rules football. </p>
<p>Netball did not duplicate male sport practices, and <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09523369408713870">did not threaten men’s sport</a>.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-commonwealth-games-are-an-opportunity-to-face-up-to-the-history-of-colonialism-93752">The Commonwealth Games are an opportunity to face up to the history of colonialism</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>The modern game</h2>
<p>It was <a href="http://library.la84.org/SportsLibrary/SportingTraditions/1991/st0801/st0801e.pdf">not until 1970</a> that the game known as women’s basketball in Australia officially became netball. </p>
<p>Although netball is still often stereotyped as a women’s game, the rules and expected behaviours of the game have eased. Societal expectations and ideologies surrounding femininity and sport have been challenged. </p>
<p>The traditional expectation that spectators be quiet, players be polite, and everyone else well-mannered have been loosened, and as a result women can be just as competitive as their male sporting counterparts.</p>
<p>Netball continues to be a popular female participation sport, especially in rural and regional areas of Australia where there are restricted leisure opportunities. <a href="https://netball.com.au/netball-participation-numbers-dominant-capping-off-a-massive-year-in-the-sport/">Figures from 2016</a> show that over half a million adult women play netball in Australia each year, along with more than 300,000 girls. </p>
<p>The social team and club environment of netball contribute not just to physical health, but also the <a href="https://ijbnpa.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1479-5868-10-98">psychological and social health</a> of participants and build healthy individuals and communities.</p>
<p>At the Commonwealth Games, <a href="https://www.gc2018.com/sport/netball">netball matches</a> in Pools A (including Australia) and B (including New Zealand) start on April 5, with finals scheduled for April 14 and 15.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/94408/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rochelle Eime receives funding from the Government of Victoria, Vic Health and Netball Victoria. She holds a joint academic position at Victoria University. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Bob Stewart does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Commonwealth Games netball is an intensely physical and competitive affair. It’s a far cry from netball’s roots – the game was designed to shape women into model middle-class citizens.Rochelle Eime, Associate Professor of Sport Participation, Federation University AustraliaBob Stewart, Visiting Fellow, La Trobe UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/890562018-02-13T11:27:31Z2018-02-13T11:27:31ZWhy we value diamond rings and other Valentine’s Day gifts<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/205325/original/file-20180207-74470-1m1fjui.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">According to an American Express report, more than six million US couples are expected to get engaged on Valentine's Day.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.pexels.com/search/engagement%20ring/">Pexels</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>“Diamonds are a girls best friend”, so the saying goes. These shiny rocks are durable and pricey. And on Valentine’s Day, it’s likely someone’s new diamond engagement ring will pop up on your Facebook or Twitter feed. </p>
<p>Many couples rely on rings to communicate their deepest feelings to each other and the world. An engagement ring is worth more than its sticker price: it tells family, friends and strangers that you are planning a wedding, you are cherished, you are an adult. It is likely the most expensive and most important object many of us will ever own, but why do we invest sentimental feelings in inanimate objects? </p>
<p>Turning objects into cherished items is nothing new. People have been spinning tales about why <a href="http://www.utpjournals.press/doi/abs/10.3138/ecf.23.2.347">things matter</a> to them for centuries. Think of your favourite teddy bear, your baby blanket, the hand-me-down furniture and bric-a-brac around your home. These objects may be crafted from ordinary cotton, wood or clay, but our feelings about them turn them into valuable assets. We cost them well above their price in the marketplace. </p>
<h2>Not just a ring</h2>
<p>It’s a story I know all too well. Over ten years ago, as my now husband and I were starting to talk marriage, I asked my mother if she was ready to part with her grandmother’s engagement ring. The setting needed work, she said, and the “diamonds” were small (I believe she used the word “paste”).</p>
<p>It was clear she wasn’t ready. And after all, I had never even met my great grandmother. Margaret had endured an unhappy marriage: she left her husband in 1925 and divorced him in 1941 (the grounds were adultery). How could this ring possibly ensure anyone’s happiness? </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/205324/original/file-20180207-74497-16u28i7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/205324/original/file-20180207-74497-16u28i7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=316&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/205324/original/file-20180207-74497-16u28i7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=316&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/205324/original/file-20180207-74497-16u28i7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=316&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/205324/original/file-20180207-74497-16u28i7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/205324/original/file-20180207-74497-16u28i7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/205324/original/file-20180207-74497-16u28i7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">‘She said yes!’</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/download/success?src=d_i1WIjtPtlR2b8QiDHukA-1-15">Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Two years after my son was born, my mother bestowed this ring, of no great monetary value, upon me. We both teared up. Three weeks later, I lost the ring. I turned our house upside down searching for it. I cried. I lied to my mother about how much I was wearing it. </p>
<p>Six months later, my toddler ran into my bedroom, gleefully brandishing a small, shiny object he had discovered (or more likely squirrelled away). It was the ring. I screamed. I cried again. I rang my mother to confess. The ring had transformed from a keepsake passed from mothers to daughters for three generations into a new tale of lost and found. </p>
<h2>Stories about objects</h2>
<p>In the 18th-century, dozens of writers took to a new form of fiction that focused on ordinary things – coins, banknotes, shoes, carriages, dolls. These stories brought things to life, granting them their own voices. Today literary scholars call them “object-narratives” or “it-narratives”, so named after their inanimate protagonists. Think Toy Story, Georgian-style. </p>
<p>My own research into <a href="http://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/literature/english-literature-1700-1830/women-work-and-clothes-eighteenth-century-novel?format=PB#7ipO191ldzRTSTjh.97">18th-century clothes</a> has meant reading novels narrated by waistcoats, petticoats, shoes and slippers. Georgian object narratives overflow with scandalous gossip about the foibles of humans. </p>
<p>The brothel is a frequent stop in these tales of circulation and the truths (mostly of the bedroom variety) owners seek to conceal from the world. And at the time, these stories became so popular that book reviewers complained about them flooding the literary marketplace.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/205326/original/file-20180207-74470-1nd1is.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/205326/original/file-20180207-74470-1nd1is.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/205326/original/file-20180207-74470-1nd1is.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/205326/original/file-20180207-74470-1nd1is.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/205326/original/file-20180207-74470-1nd1is.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=630&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/205326/original/file-20180207-74470-1nd1is.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=630&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/205326/original/file-20180207-74470-1nd1is.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=630&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Things we value.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.pexels.com/photo/woman-standing-beside-brown-wooden-shelf-715834/">Pexels</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>By the late 18th-century, the genre had grown up to focus on children and their possessions. Children could read about <a href="https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=The+Adventures+of+a+Pincushion&oq=The+Adventures+of+a+Pincushion&aqs=chrome..69i57j69i64.2014j0j9&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8">The Adventures of a Pincushion</a>, the <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/The_Life_and_Perambulations_of_a_Mouse.html?id=6YY6AQAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=kp_read_button&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false">Life and Perambulation of a Mouse</a>, <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/The_Adventures_of_a_Whipping_top.html?id=SPt4mQEACAAJ&redir_esc=y">The Adventures of a Whipping-Top</a> and The Silver Thimble. English professor and author Lynn Festa has <a href="http://www.bucknell.edu/script/upress/book.asp?id=255">written brilliantly</a> about how these stories instructed Georgian children to care for their things: good owners made good British subjects. And in this way, it’s not hard to see how these stories paved the way for books like <a href="https://www.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=http://t1.gstatic.com/images?q%3Dtbn:ANd9GcSZ7ylq6PDaokG7VNWpt6qbBSxnnyL9q8R1_fFIV3-yc5yE5gAe&imgrefurl=https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Velveteen_Rabbit_Or_How_Toys_Become.html?id%3DcRumDgAAQBAJ%26source%3Dkp_cover&h=700&w=543&tbnid=_fzxhK683qN9ZM:&tbnh=160&tbnw=124&usg=__2yGT0rjbbLH3hEm7BsDkJ4GqZWE%3D&vet=10ahUKEwiK17mTnaDZAhXJAMAKHYh5AjQQ_B0IkwIwHQ..i&docid=DLhr4nyP5RT_wM&itg=1&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiK17mTnaDZAhXJAMAKHYh5AjQQ_B0IkwIwHQ">The Velveteen Rabbit</a> and <a href="https://www.waterstones.com/series/paddington">Paddington Bear</a>. </p>
<h2>The story of things</h2>
<p>Last year, I led a school project that taught children how to recreate these tales. In the <a href="http://www.fairfaxhouse.co.uk/education/story-of-things/">Story of Things</a>, year four and five pupils devised their own versions of the histories of secret dresser drawers, tea caddies, dolls, shoes and yes, many chamber pots, inspired by the collection of Georgian furniture at <a href="http://www.fairfaxhouse.co.uk">Fairfax House</a> in York. </p>
<p>I thought I was teaching the children, but their brilliant stories convinced me of our <a href="http://www.fairfaxhouse.co.uk/education/story-of-things/teacher-resources/">continued longing</a> to connect with the objects around us and our imaginative capacities to turn inanimate things into vivid, talkative beings. </p>
<p>On Valentine’s Day, it’s all to easy to feel annoyed by couples advertising their deepest feelings with objects – or by the ever more elaborate stakes of social media ready proposals. But it’s important to remember, that we all hold at least one object close to our hearts – no matter how chic or shabby. And in this way, the stories we tell ourselves about the things we own remind us of the ways we love and are loved by others.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/89056/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Chloe Wigston Smith does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Why do we attach sentimental value to objects and other things?Chloe Wigston Smith, Lecturer in 18th-century Literature, University of YorkLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.