• Current News
• Africa
• Alabama
• Alaska
• Antarctic
• Archaeology
• Arctic
• Arizona
• Arkansas
• Asia
• Astronomy
• Atlantic
• Australia and Pacific
• California
• Canada
• Caves and Karst
• Central America & Mexico
• Coastal Geology
• Colorado
• Contamination
• Delaware
• Diamonds
• Dinosaurs
• Earthquakes
• Energy
• Engineering Geology
• Environment
• Europe
• Floods
• Florida
• Fossils
• Gemstones
• Geologist Career
• Geology for Kids
• Georgia
• Geothermal
• Glaciers
• Global Warming
• Gold
• GPS and GIS
• Great Websites
• Ground Water
• Hawaii
• Historical Geology
• Hurricanes and Cyclones
• Idaho
• Illinois
• Indiana
• Interesting
• Kansas
• Kentucky
• Landslides
• Louisiana
• Maine
• Maps
• Mars
• Maryland
• Massachusetts
• Metals
• Meteorology
• Meteors and Meteorites
• Michigan
• Minerals
• Mining
• Minnesota
• Mississippi
• Missouri
• Montana
• Natural Hazards
• Nebraska
• Nevada
• New Hampshire
• New Jersey
• New Mexico
• New York
• North Carolina
• North Dakota
• Oceanography
• Ohio
• Oil and Gas
• Oklahoma
• Oregon
• Pennsylvania
• Plate Tectonics
• Satellite Images
• South America
• South Dakota
• Space
• Subsidence
• Teaching Science
• Tennessee
• Texas
• Tornadoes
• Tsunami
• United States
• Utah
• Vermont
• Virginia
• Volcanoes
• Washington
• Water
• West Virginia
• Wildfire
• Wisconsin
• Wyoming

Geology News
Diamonds Current Events

Kimberley Consolidated Mining and Batloung Mining Services have a joint venture to mine a South African property that contains both alluvial gravels and Kimberlite.pipe

Kimberly Consolidated Mining sold a 46 carat blue-white diamond for $1.28 million US - that was $28,000 per carat. The stone was mined at the Bo-Karoo alluvial mine in South Africa’s Northern Cape.

An article at Mining Weekly explores some of the challenges faced by diamond miners. These include: bureaucracy, logistics, corruption, price stability, synthetic diamonds and more. Angola was cited as being a difficult country to work in, and Canada was cited as being underexplored.

The Diavik Mine in Canada’s Northwest Territories has produced over 41.5 million carats since mining began in 2003. All of this has been from surface production. Now operators at the mine owned by Rio Tinto and Harry Winston Diamond consider going underground.

There is only one active diamond mine in the United States - at Crater of Diamonds State Park in Arkansas. The mine yields a few hundred carats per year, mostly found by pay-to-dig visitors. A report at FakeMinerals.com says that a person has been sneaking look-alike diamonds from an Indian mine into the park and claiming that they were found there. The stones are then sold to people willing to pay high prices for stones that represent the Arkansas locality.

Diamond is the world’s most popular gemstone and it’s qualities as the hardest natural substance make it an excellent abrasive. However, diamond is used for many other things which include: heat sink, speaker dome, laser windows and microbearings.

Nine purple diamonds were discovered in surface rock samples collected from the Ekomiak Conglomerate on a property in James Bay, Quebec.

Some meteorites contain lots of nanometer-sized diamonds. This was the first discovery that started scientists thinking about the possibility of diamonds in space. Now the Spitzer Space Telescope is going to look for them.

After a long civil war and years of importing food staples, the government of Sierra Leone and some corporate contributors, are trying to reestablish farming as an important occupation and way of life.

Scientists have discovered that the pattern of a phosphorescent glow given off by blue diamonds under ultraviolet light is unique to each stone.

Alrosa, the Russian state-run diamond producer will cut its flow of diamonds to De Beers by about 33% next year. Combine that with a South African supply decline of about 15% and De Beers might have a much lower carat volume.

“Herkimer Diamond” is the name given to the doubly terminated quartz crystals found in Herkimer County, New York and surrounding areas. They are highly prized by mineral collectors. This article has several photos and explains some methods used to find them.

Early this year a couple hundred diamonds - including one of 2.4 carats - were found by Hudson Resources near Garnet Lake in west Greenland. Now prospectors are flocking to Greenland with the hope of finding a large deposit. Diamonds, gold and other resources of Greenland are attracting attention with warming global temperatures.

Australia’s Pilbara holds a treasure of iron ore, natural gas, uranium, coal, diamonds and numerous metals. Mining activity there has been increasing at a rapid rate and that is putting pressure on local communities, the environment and the old ways of life.

The 7000 carat green diamond found about a week ago in a small South African mining company was certified as genuine. It is now officially the largest gem diamond ever found.

A small South African mining company reportedly found a 7000 carat green diamond (about the size of a coconut) and a shareholder provided a photo to BBC (displayed in their article). This would be the largest diamond ever found and diamonds of green color are extremely rare. There has been no official announcement of the mining company’s identity and no confirmation that the stone is genuine.

Update: Another article on this stone

The oldest diamonds discovered to date were identified in a zircon crystal found in Western Australia. The tiny diamonds are believed to be about 4.25 billion years old and might provide important information about Earth’s history.

De Beers is using laser mapping technology to improve safety at the famous Kimberley diamond mine in South Africa. A laser scanning system captures highly accurate slope measurements and will help identify potential failures within the pit wall. De Beers will also use the system to measure the volume of waste dumps and stockpiles around the mine.

Bill McIlquham of Peterborough, Ontario has provided two photos of crystal clusters removed from the diamond cavity featured in our article on “Herikmer Diamonds”. We met Bill at the Ace of Diamonds Mine a couple years ago and he kindly shared some of his methods for finding Herkimers in the article.

National Institute of Standards Image

We didn’t make this up! An article on the BBC website reports that Edinburgh University researchers have a machine the transforms peanut butter into diamonds. This is not a commercial venture, its the production of a novelty material to make a point that peanut butter contains carbon and given the right amount of pressure it can be converted into other substances. (It’s July 4th and we better take the rest of today off… we stumbled upon the image shown at right - a jar of “Standard Reference Material” peanut butter from the National Institute of Standards and Technology.)

Everyone has heard of De Beers, the dominant force in world diamond markets. A new company to watch is Alrosa, the Russian state-owned diamond diamond company that currently produces virtually all of Russia’s gem-quality diamonds and also mines diamonds in Angola and Namibia. They currently sell about 25% of the world’s uncut diamonds to De Beers. However, in 2009 Alrosa will sell their production independently.

Sandia.gov Image

India imports about 80% of Africa’s diamonds. The cities of Gujarat and Maharashtra are diamond trade centers where hundreds of thousands of workers convert the rough stones into finished gems. South Africa, Botswana, Congo and Angola want to bring these value added products and enormous employment into their own economy. So, they plan to impose a heavy duty on the export of rough diamonds. Some Indian companies are already moving some of their gem processing to cities in Africa.

Sandia.gov Image

Diamonds are stable at high temperatures and high pressures or at low pressures and low temperatures. This makes them vulnerable to degradation to graphite during their rise from deep in the mantle to the surface - so they must rise quickly and cool quickly. Lionel Wilson and James Head have a theory for kimberlite emplacement that honors these temperature/pressure requirements and explains the unusual shape of the kimberlite pipes.