Diamond jewelry never goes out of fashion. These rare and beautiful gemstones stand right at the top of the hierarchy and are more valuable than emeralds, rubies, sapphires, and every other precision stone out there.
Even so, collectively we don’t know an awful lot about them. While we all know a diamond when we see one, they remain a mystery to many.
The intent of this post is to educate you a little more on what diamonds are and how they came to be so popular. Once you understand diamonds, you can instantly use them to become more fashionable and delight friends with your newly learned fun facts!
In The Past, People Used Diamonds To Ward Off Madness
Modern science tells us that gemstones have little to no effect on a person’s propensity for madness. But in the past, people didn’t know that, so they used diamonds in an attempt to keep themselves mentally healthy.
Of course, the approach wasn’t directly effective, but it might have had a placebo effect.
Researchers Began Investigating Technologies To Create Lab-Grown Diamonds In The 1950s
General Electric set up a laboratory to investigate whether it could produce lab-grown diamonds in 1955, due to spirally demand for the gemstones from the public and industry. It wanted to create stones from graphite, another carbon-based compound, by applying intense pressure and heat. The goal was to create synthetic loose diamonds for various applications.
Amazingly, the company was successful and began selling diamond products all over the world.
The Hope Diamond Is Much Smaller Than It Used To Be
The Hope Diamond, a massive blue diamond, is 45.52 carats, which is enormous for a diamond. However, researchers believe that it may have been even bigger when first mined in India, perhaps as large as 112 carats in the mid-17th century
Diamonds Are The Hardest Known Material
People often think of granite or titanium when imagining hard materials. But of all the minerals and rocks on Earth, diamond is the hardest. Its closest competitors are cubic boron nitride and silicon nitride, but these substances are still a distant second.
Diamond is so hard because of the structure of carbon atoms it contains. The entire crystal is essentially one giant. Interlocking molecule where each atom supports the others around it. The more perfect the internal structure of the diamond, the stronger it is. That’s why you don’t have to worry all that much about dropping diamonds on the floor. The floor is much more likely to get damaged than the diamond.
It Rains Diamonds On Neptune
Neptune is the most distant planet in the solar system that we know of. And it’s also a mysterious world. Due to intense pressures in the atmosphere, researchers believe that it may rain diamonds close to the core of the planet due to intense pressure and heat.
Diamonds Form About 90 Miles Below The Earth’s Surface
It’s amazing that we have access to any diamonds in mines at the surface, given how far down scientists believe that they form. Researchers believe that diamonds come into being about 90 miles below the surface where temperature and pressure conditions are just right.
