The
Christian Science Monitor reports that Russia recently declassified news that it has an asteroid crater with trillions of carats worth of diamonds in it. These diamonds are apparently enough to supply global markets for the next 3,000 years. The
Monitor syas the crater was discovered in the 1970s nin the
Popigai asteroid crater.
The type of diamonds in the crater are known as impact diamonds. Gizmodo
notes that these diamonds are not useful for jewelry, but very useful in the tech industry, such as in making lasers. They are formed when a meteor or comet strikes Earth and carbon is fused into diamond. However, they have never been found on such a large scale. Life's Little Mysteries
explains how the diamonds in the crater may have been formed. It also quotes Richard April, a professor of geology at Colgate University, as saying a meteorite-impact crater with this many diamonds in it is "kind of unlikely."
A 2004 Geology report on the Popigai crater (which mentions impact diamonds) can be found
here. An article about how diamonds form can be found
here on geology.com.
