Russia reveals shiny state secret: It's awash in diamonds

[lhorenzoo]

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Trillions of carats' lie below a 35-million-year-old, 62-mile diameter asteroid crater in eastern Siberia known as Popigai Astroblem. The Russians have known about the site since the 1970s.

Russia has just declassified news that will shake world gem markets to their core: the discovery of a vast new diamond field containing "trillions of carats," enough to supply global markets for another 3,000 years.
The Soviets discovered the bonanza back in the 1970s beneath a 35-million-year-old, 62-mile diameter asteroid crater in easternSiberia known as Popigai Astroblem.
They decided to keep it secret, and not to exploit it, apparently because the USSR's huge diamond operations at Mirny, in Yakutia, were already producing immense profits in what was then a tightly controlled world market.

The Soviets were also producing a range of artificial diamonds for industry, into which they had invested heavily.
The veil of secrecy was finally lifted over the weekend, andMoscow permitted scientists from the nearby Novosibirsk Institute of Geology and Mineralogy to talk about it with Russian journalists.
According to the official news agency, ITAR-Tass, the diamonds at Popigai are "twice as hard" as the usual gemstones, making them ideal for industrial and scientific uses.
The institute's director, Nikolai Pokhilenko, told the agency that news of what's in the new field could be enough to "overturn" global diamond markets.
"The resources of super-hard diamonds contained in rocks of the Popigai crypto-explosion structure, are by a factor of ten bigger than the world's all known reserves," Mr. Pokhilenko said. "We are speaking about trillions of carats. By comparison, present-day known reserves in Yakutia are estimated at one billion carats."

The type of stones at Popigai are known as "impact diamonds," which theoretically result when something like a meteor plows into an existing diamond deposit at high velocity. The Russians say most such diamonds found in the past have been "space diamonds" of extraterrestrial origin found in meteor craters.
They claim the Popigai site is unique in the world, thus making Russia the monopoly proprietor of a resource that's likely to become increasingly important in high-precision scientific and industrial processes.
"The value of impact diamonds is added by their unusual abrasive features and large grain size," Pokhilenko told Tass. "This expands significantly the scope of their industrial use and makes them more valuable for industrial purposes."
Russian scientists say the news is likely to change the shape of global diamond markets, although the main customers for the super-hard gems will probably be big corporations and scientific institutes.



Russia reveals shiny state secret: It's awash in diamonds - Yahoo! News Maktoob

grabe sa reserves sa russia , well kept hidden secret....

[Axelremadeyo]

lupig ang quality ani sa diamonds sa sierra leone......

[walker]

diamonds are just stones

except.. we call them gems

[reptoid]

Like caviar... if diamonds were cheap they wouldn't have the same appeal.

[crossramz]

how did they manage to keep it hidden from world information for 40 years.. haha.. daghana guro gipamatay ani..

well if you knew what i mean..

[balipseyev]

Diamonds prices are high because they are rare to find and difficult/costly to produce artificially....

Now if mudaghan ang supply munaog sad ang presyo ani....

[Axelremadeyo]

paliton nasad ni sa mga cartel para macontrol nila ang price sa diamonds sa world market like in the movie blood diamond.

[jack_bauer]

maayo unta ma sulbad ng "blood diamonds" ani sa africa.. daghan nman supply diay..

naa untay international law mg bawal sa commodity/item hoarding.. tsk..tsk..tsk..

[M.A.D.]

Great timing. Haha apparently DeBeers won't be happy because their gig is up.

Diamonds aren't really rare. They are just tightly regulated that's why supply is so low and demand is so high.

Maybe soon after this china may announce to the world that they have an abundant supply of gold.

That may destroy the financial system of the west.

[bofox44]

Mahal ang Diamonds kay taas man siya og Marginal Utility. So yeah, mao ng mahal siya..