An enormous 1,174-carat diamond was recently unearthed in Botswana, days after another huge precious stone was discovered in the African country. The mining company, Lucara Diamond Corp., said in a statement that the diamond, which measures 77mm long, 55mm wide and 33mm thick, was found at the Karowe diamond mine last month. The company presented the diamond to the government at a ceremony on Wednesday.
It is the third diamond of over 1,000 carats unearthed from the same mining location, a world record for Karowe. Apart from the recovery of the rare rock, the mining company also unearthed several other diamonds — weighing 471, 218 and 159 carats — of similar appearance, suggesting the 1,174-carat diamond was part of a larger diamond with an estimated weight of more than 2000 carats.
Before the discovery of the mega diamond, another huge 1,098-carat precious stone was discovered in Botswana by diamond firm Debswana, which was then believed to be the world’s third-largest gem-quality stone ever to be mined. The world's second-largest diamond ‘Lesedi La Rona’ was also found in Botswana in 2015.
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How difficult is it to mine huge diamonds?
{{/usCountry}}How difficult is it to mine huge diamonds?
{{/usCountry}}The vast majority of global diamond production constitutes small diamonds, at less than one carat. Small diamonds are common and only useful for industrial applications. On the other hand, large gemstone-quality diamonds are extremely rare and precious.
Billions of years old natural diamonds formed deep in the Earth and some scientists have suggested that there are vast quantities of gem-quality stone hundreds of kilometres deep, according to an article by The Conversation. The authors Jodie Bradby and Nigel Marks wrote that the deepest hole ever drilled is about 12 kilometres and we will never be able to mine these deep-earth diamonds.
The report says that the diamonds unearthed by mining companies are typically thought to have come up near the surface due to a deep-source volcanic eruption. The surfacing of diamonds is not an easy process as the volcanic eruption needs to be fast enough to deliver the stones and at the same time, they can’t be exposed to extreme heat, shock or oxygen.
Most diamonds are found within igneous rocks called Kimberlite but only a small percentage of all known Kimberlite deposits contain diamonds, the authors said. On top of it, only a handful of these rocks are rich enough with diamonds to warrant being mined, which makes it very difficult to find an ideal condition.
What is behind the sudden rush?
According to Brady and Marks, large natural diamonds often get destroyed during the mining process when an ore is blasted with explosives and then crushed into fragments to search for diamonds. But companies have come up with new technologies that process with the aid of X-ray ore-sorting technology, specifically targeted for these “mega diamond recovery”.
The latest mega diamond from the Karowe mine was recovered using these newer techniques, indicating that more of these enormous stones will be discovered in the future. “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,” the duo wrote.
(With PTI inputs)