A team from Johns Hopkins University has presented a new model that suggests that diamonds are forming all the time in deep Earth, and that they can even form from water. The study suggests that water can form diamonds naturally under temperatures over 1650F and high pressures, over 725,000 pounds per sq in.
The key, the team shares in the research, is the natural decline of pH that makes water acidic. The drawback is, however, that the diamonds formed under these conditions would be microscopically small. But the study does thwart the belief that diamonds can only form under very specific chemical reactions, through reduction and oxidation as fluids move through rock. Instead, diamonds can form from the smallest thing, such has shifts in pH.
Another significant drawback is that for these conditions to occur naturally, people would have to get 100 miles below the surface of our planet. This can spur a desire to build more advanced tiny drills to veer off after these diamonds, but it’s likely that it won’t happen for some time. The team and Johns Hopkins hopes that their work can inspire other studies to examine the relationship between deep Earth fluids and rock, in order to get a better understanding of the way the Earth’s inner cores have changed over time.
