Scientists Claim When Supercontinents Split, It Could Cause ‘Fountains of Diamonds’ to Erupt From the Earth’s Crust
A team of researchers has observed that a specific geological event can set into action several events that could lead to the explosion of diamonds, stated Indy100. Findings regarding this activity have been published in Nature.
The geological event in question is the breakup of supercontinents. The team associated with the study believes that this event could lead to diamonds erupting out of the surface, from the core. Diamonds are typically formed 150 kilometres below the Earth's surface. Processes like kimberlite eruptions, which have a speed of 133 kilometres per hour, take place in this region. Kimberlite is a rock containing diamonds, which gets fired up during such eruptions. Experts in past examinations have found that this eruption sometimes leads to an explosion of diamonds.
The objective of the study was to understand what kind of stimulus facilitates this eruption, according to Live Science. For this, the team began to look for connections between the age of kimberlite rocks that had erupted, and the degree of plate fragmentation that happened during the eruption. Analysis aided experts in noticing a specific pattern.
Researchers found that over the last 500 million years, whenever the plates started to pull apart, 22 million to 30 million years later, kimberlite eruptions were heightened. Experts cited that 25 million years after the breakup of the southern supercontinent Gondwana, kimberlite eruptions began picking up in present-day Africa and South America. These eruptions originated at the rift edges but were facilitated somewhere in the center of the landmasses.
For the study, experts created multiple computer models involving the deep crust as well as the upper mantle. Through these models, experts figured out that when tectonic plates move away from each other, continental crusts begin to thin. During this time, the crust at the top also starts to stretch and create valleys. All of this results in hot rocks coming up, interacting with the disturbed surface, and then turning cool. After cooling, these rocks sink back again, leading to local spots of circulation.
All of this shifting creates instability, leading to a lot of material flowing towards the centre of the continent. The whole scenario will not always lead to the eruption of diamonds, but can sometimes lead to it with the right mixing of constituents. In this phenomenon, if rocks from the upper mantle and lower crust flow against each other, there is a possibility that the resultant mixture moving towards the centre also includes certain kimberlite minerals like diamonds. The pace with which the kimberlite eruption moves towards the surface could then very well create a fountain of diamonds. Such eruptions have reportedly been noted before, with one of them being described in another study in Nature.
In this study, researchers concluded that kimberlite eruptions typically happen when a massive rearrangement of tectonic plates takes place. Such a massive rearrangement does take place during the breakups of supercontinents, so it could be an event encouraging kimberlite eruptions.
Thomas Gernon, a professor of Earth and climate science at the University of Southampton in England and the lead author of the study, believes that such eruptions must have also taken place during the breakup of the supercontinent Pangaea. The experts further claimed that such processes happen in the middle of continents, where the crust is thick and hard. Researchers are hopeful that an in-depth understanding of this process could help in detecting hidden diamond deposits and also explain why some volcanic eruptions happen millions of years after supercontinent breakup. The team is now intrigued to understand what other processes this kind of eruption impacts in the Earth's crust.