Have you ever wondered where precious diamonds come from? It is most likely made out of recycled seabed cooked deep in the Earth.Traces of salt trapped in many diamonds show the stones are formed from ancient seabeds that became buried deep beneath the Earth's crust, according to the latest research.Most diamonds found at the Earth's surface are formed this way. Others are created by crystallisation of melts deep in the mantle.In experiments recreating the extreme pressures and temperatures found 200 km underground, a team of researchers demonstrated that seawater in sediment from the bottom of the ocean reacts in the right way to produce the balance of salts found in a diamond.The study, published in Science Advances, settles a long-standing question about the formation of diamonds."There was a theory that the salts trapped inside diamonds came from marine seawater, but couldn't be tested," says lead author Michael."Our research showed that they came from marine sediment," the ...
