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Earth

Inside the hunt for unknown minerals in super-deep diamonds

Diamonds formed in Earth’s lower mantle contain tiny flecks of minerals that are helping us understand the inner workings of our planet

By James Dinneen

11 April 2025

Diamond with inclusions — A diamond from deep inside Earth
Nester Korolev

I’m squinting at a diamond in the palm of my hand. As gems go, it’s nothing special: smaller than a grain of rice and full of impurities, it would fetch a poor price. But for researchers like , those impurities are invaluable for the information they reveal about geological processes under way deep within Earth – all the more so given that some of them look unlike anything we have encountered before. “I hope that we will discover a new mineral,” he says.

This particular diamond formed around 600 kilometres…

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