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Diamonds: Earth's Deepest Gem · PlanetGeo: The Geology Podcast

• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to Planet Geo, the podcast where we talk about our amazing planet, how it all works, and why it matters to you.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: Before we get too deep in, those of you sitting at home, if you have an idea, have uh some comments, please reach out to us.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: We're happy to hear those.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we love reading those emails.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, those are great.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: They're awesome.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so we've had some really good ideas.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: So keep them coming.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: All right, let's do some introductions, Chris.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: You are Chris Bullheis, high school science teacher extraordinaire in the great state of Michigan.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: I am Jesse Ramick, geoscience professor at Penn State, and your former student.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: And this is Planet Geo, a podcast where we talk about some amazing aspects of our planet and why they matter.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: All right, Chris, but before we get started, we're gonna talk about diamonds this week.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: But before we get into that, what's got you fired up?
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: What's keeping you up at night?
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_01: All right, so I've been back at school now teaching for two weeks.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I'm gonna tell you, the it is so different doing this during COVID.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_01: And that I'll tell you what, that first week, that first day was rough.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my gosh.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: I get used to the technology or what?
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_01: The technology wasn't working.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_01: Teaching with a mask on, the kids all have masks on, and I I was not really a happy guy.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_01: What's got me fired up?
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_01: That's the question, right?
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_01: I'm two weeks in now to full-time face-to-face, and I'm I'm starting to have fun, but it is so different.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_01: I'll tell you, man, when I look at these kids and I've got a mask on and they can't read my face and they got a mask on, I can't read theirs.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_01: That's really hard for me.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I look into their face.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_01: I I when I say something funny, I look at them, I'm like, I don't know.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_01: I'm talking to a wall.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_01: All I see are eyes, and they're not smiling with their eyes very well, and that pisses me off.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_01: You know how many times I've said to the kids, hey, I don't feel like I got the proper level of appreciation for what I just said right there.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you you get that, and then you you feel that way in normal conversation too, though.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, it's not that's not an unusual feeling.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, come on, they gotta give me something.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's yeah, yeah.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: You you are pretty funny.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: You are pretty funny out there when you're lecturing.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_01: Point is here's the thing.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_01: I'm fired up because I'm starting to have fun with them.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I'm adjusting to what what this is like right now.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and you know what?
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_01: It is the same job.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_01: All right, it's all about kids, it's all about relationships.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_01: I'm fired up.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_01: Let's go.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_01: How about you?
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_01: What's got you going?
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I um I I got engaged recently.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: So um yeah, man.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: How in the hell did that happen?
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: That's what I need to know.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: Who did I swindle to get find somebody that's willing to marry me?
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_00: I know, right?
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_00: No, yeah, my uh so my now fiance, Tess and I, we got engaged uh a couple weeks ago.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: And uh yeah, you know, we're trying to figure out how to how to plan a wedding, what we're gonna do during the time of COVID.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_00: It's complicated, a little bit stressful, I will admit, but uh, you know, we're gonna do it, we're gonna have fun and figure out a way to make it happen.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_01: So well, I'll tell you, first of all, I want to say congratulations.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_01: Uh heartfelt, non-sarcastic congratulations because that's incredible.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_01: I'm really happy for you and Tess.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_01: She's amazing.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_01: Um, she has to be amazing to put up with you.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_01: Indeed, indeed.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_01: But um, that is really cool.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_01: Good for you.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_01: That's great.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_01: That's a good segue into what we're talking about today, which is diamonds.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_01: So I want to start with this then.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, you just went then you had to go diamond shopping, right?
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: I did indeed.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: I went diamond shopping.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: I uh pulled out the credit card, went and bought myself a diamond.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: All right, and uh yeah, it was an interesting experience.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: I lived a lot.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_01: Um well, all right.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_01: Let's talk a little bit about that because I remember way back when I'm ancient, but I did the same thing.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_01: So you're a geologist, obviously.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, we all think that when all things earth related, that that we have a a corner on on the market of knowledge.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_01: That's right, right?
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_01: That's right.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_01: We know it.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_01: So, did you bring did you bring your own uh microscope when you went diamond shopping?
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: No, I didn't I didn't go to that level, no, but I did, you know, I I this poor saleswoman, I mean, she I put her through the ringer because I was really after a Canadian diamond, because you know, I did my PhD in Canada.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um, a lot of my collaborators study diamonds and do a lot of detailed work, and I'm starting to work on some diamonds up in northern Canada.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: We got some very exciting stuff, I think.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: So I really wanted a Canadian diamond, right?
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: And this woman was like, she just was like, why do you want Canadian diamond?
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I've searched everywhere, you know what this specific thing, blah, blah, blah.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, no, no, no, come on.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: I want a Canadian diamond, you know, it has some personal value for me.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_01: Well, yeah, and we're gonna get into some of the other things surrounding that too, about why maybe you wanted a Canadian diamond.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_01: But I remember when I went diamond shopping for Jenny, I brought my own hand lens, you know, and then they had the microscopes on the counter.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_01: And so I'm I'm looking at this thing under the scope and looking for the little impurities in them.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, nope, that's not gonna do.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_01: That can see black flecks in this.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_01: Uh no, I need to do better than that.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_01: So I ended up with a a very high quality tiny diamond.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: That's exactly what I did too.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_00: I did the same thing.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, all right, well, I okay, I can't afford that size.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: So um let's go down and step down in size and let's get one.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: I, however, kind of wanted some inclusions because the inclusions are very scientifically very interesting.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I wanted no colors.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, oh no, I want it clear, good color, but I can take some inclusions because then I can, you know, when we're walking around in Tesla's wearing this freaking diamond, I can just start banging on about how cool Canadian diamonds with the inclusions and all the ancient continents formed this way and that way.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, yeah, you're a nerd.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_01: I was the same way, though.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_01: I was the same way.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_01: Diamonds are they're they're expensive.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean, yeah, they're super expensive, and it kind of hurts.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_00: And this is a huge industry, and this is a really economically relevant industry.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, some of the numbers that I was finding$80 billion a year in the the total diamond market, including gem diamonds, including rough industrial diamonds.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's huge.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, that's that is insane.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_01: So I went and when I first came across that figure, 80 actually came up with uh something closer to 90 billion dollars a year.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_01: That's over twice the US movie industry.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_01: Total.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: Massive.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_01: It's crazy.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_01: And and like the so then I went in because I was watching the Lions today, and you know, the the NFL, it's a huge industry, right?
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_01: It's$14 billion a year.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_01: But wait a minute,$14 billion compared to$80 billion a year.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_01: This is a massive industry.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so it's a very economically relevant industry, and diamonds are super interesting scientifically as well.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_00: And we're gonna dive into that at the end.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_00: So, our uh flow here is we're gonna talk about sort of the history of diamonds, what why we value them at all, like why do humans value diamonds and why are they so expensive?
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and you know, some of the science behind them, how they're formed, where we find them, what they tell us about the earth, and and a little discussion about the sort of societal impacts of right, you know, ethical uh the ethics behind it, I would say.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_01: So, could we talk about that first?
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, let's do it.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_01: Like, let's do it.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_01: That's uh so because this is something that's important to me.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_01: Most people have heard of the movie Blood Diamond and so on, and I watched the movie, and I'm sure you've watched it.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I love that movie.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_01: I love Leo.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_01: Very compelling movie and a compelling story, right?
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_01: And it raises awareness for the issue of um, is it ethical to get diamonds from certain areas?
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, um, you know, first of all, it's a non-renewable resource, right?
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_01: And and take them out, they're not coming back, this process isn't happening anymore.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_01: So we're uh, you know, like where do you sit on that in terms of you just went through the process, you bought a diamond.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_01: You had to think about, well, do we even want to have a diamond?
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_01: I'm sure you had that thought because I know you.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, oh, absolutely.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_00: No, I mean we we had that discussion, you know, we still have that discussion a little bit of is it worth it to pay for this thing?
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, there so you and I have both read up a lot of articles about this in preparation for making this podcast.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_00: It's really interesting because there's multiple sides, as in everything, there's multiple sides to all the arguments, right?
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_00: The Blood Diamond movie is really compelling and has a lot of truth in it, in that there are a lot of places where you probably don't want to die buy diamonds from because the money's flowing to bad actors in some way.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and then there's the other way a lot of this was funded to to or uh the profits were used to fund their wars in Africa and so on, right?
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_01: There are two terms that are thrown out the origin of the diamond, and you just alluded to it, the provenance of the diamond.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_01: And the origin is where the diamond was actually mined from, and the provenance is the last stop the diamond had made before it made its way to you.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_01: And and so they're often confused.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you can ask, where did this diamond come from?
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_01: I want to make sure it didn't come from Africa, or you know, that kind of thing.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_01: And and and so, well, this no, this diamond came from such and such location, when in reality it might have been mined from a place unethically, and but its last stop was it was a reliable place.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_01: And so that's what's said.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_01: It's very difficult to do this.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and this is the thing.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_00: One of my PhD supervisors, Graham Pearson, was has been working on diamonds for for a long time, um, and was kind of on the forefront of trying to figure out can we chemically identify where diamonds came from?
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_00: And the answer is almost certainly no.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_00: It's very difficult to do, at least, to kind of look at a diamond and say where did it come from based on just the composition of the diamond or anything like that.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_00: Part of the reason I wanted a Canadian diamond is that Canada has this really strict tracing procedures where every diamond you get from Canada, from the time they mine it all the way to the gem store, it has a tracer on it.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_00: They can track that all the way back.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_00: So it's sort of, you know, very ethically mined, sustainably mined.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: And actually, I think there's a polar bear etched with a laser in every Canadian gem diamond that's ended up ends up being sold.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so you know, this was kind of where I learned a lot about diamonds, is in a Canadian university that has a lot of Canadian diamond researchers and in sort of integration with the industry.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_00: So I kind of learned that way.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_00: And then there's the flip side of the really unethical diamonds and the really sort of conflict diamonds, but then there's a lot of stuff in between, right?
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_00: Like there's a country like Botswana where a lot of their GDP is based on diamond mining and it's a huge export for them.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: Financially really helps their country.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but it's maybe slightly more difficult to trace the origins of a Botswanan diamond than a Canadian diamond in some cases.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_00: So you kind of have to go through that, and everybody's got to do this individually.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_00: Like, is my should I spend my money on a Botswanan diamond with the hope that my money's making it to a good place and helping those really poor people in that country?
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_00: It's kind of something you have to consider, right?
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_01: And the way I I think it I think I do, you know, uh I thought I've thought a lot about it.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't, uh to be honest with you, to be flat out honest, I didn't think about this at all when I bought a diamond for Jenny.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, um, it became something that was important to me later on.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_00: You know, for me, I I I kind of came down on the side of I want a Canadian diamond because I study Canadian diamonds nowadays.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and you know, that that kind of adds a little bit of personality to it.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_00: Um and also it supports the Canadian diamond industry, which is a pretty massive, has a massive footprint, at least.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, the the Northwest territories where all these diamond mines are.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_00: It's a big industry that over since diamonds were discovered there in like the the mid-1990s, um, they've spent over$15 billion there.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um, 10 billion of that went to truly northern companies, uh, territorial govern uh territorial companies, and about four billion went to uh Inuit owned companies.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, it's had a big economic impact on the region.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_00: And I kind of wanted to support that in part because my research is up there.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_01: So, Jesse, can you talk a little bit about what you're doing uh with your diamond research?
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, we don't really know how old the oldest diamonds on earth are, and we're gonna get into this because diamonds have a very specific formational conditions, actually, it really only exists in the roots of continents.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_00: So the question of when did diamonds start to form on Earth is really related to when did continents form and when did continents form these deep roots.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_00: We've been looking at some really old diamonds in Canada, and we found some really interesting characteristics that help us that help tell us a lot about how ancient continents formed and how and what they looked like when they were formed, which is a big part of my research.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_00: So that's where my interest lies.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_01: Because you are trying to determine when plate tectonics started on this planet.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_00: When did plate tectonics start?
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_00: You know, what basically what did the early Earth look like?
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_00: What did the Earth look like?
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_00: And diamonds are helping you do that.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly, exactly.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_00: Frickin' awesome.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_00: So diamonds, diamonds are scientifically awesome.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, they are so cool.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_00: I know they are these treasures of of of scientific knowledge, but they're also they've also been treasures for a long time to humans.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_00: And so it doesn't, you know, not a lot of people know why why we why do we care about diamonds?
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, when did we start caring about diamonds as humans?
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_00: Like when did they become valued?
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_01: What what that is is so you what you just said triggered something in me.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_01: Like, you know, uh you go back 2,000 years, uh, it was rubies and emeralds and sapphires that were more sought after, not diamonds.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you know, and that's because of you know, when diamonds are taken out of the ground, out of the earth, they don't look that spectacular, right?
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it wasn't really until uh you know just a couple hundred years ago, actually, when or maybe three hundred years ago, when diamonds became uh sought after.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_01: You know, in Brazil, they were uh these gold miners were throwing away diamonds because they didn't look like anything, you know.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_01: Like, what what the heck is this?
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_01: I this is shit.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_01: I'm looking for gold.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, no, you're exactly right.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, so they've kind of been a gem of the the super upper class for you know a long time, millennia.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_00: But really uh the ruling class and and more recently, sort of everybody else started getting interested in diamonds only recently, only a hundred years or so ago, when this became kind of a popular thing, and and a little bit through mark marketing, marketing strategies of large companies.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, they're sparkly because they look like they look pretty boring on the outside.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, um, so why why do they sparkle so much?
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, let's go.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_01: So this is something that I think is really cool.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_01: Uh the diamond sparkles the way it does because of what it does with white light when it enters a cut gem.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_01: Here's what happened the speed of light.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_01: It takes light traveling from the sun to earth eight minutes and twenty seconds.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yep, yeah, yeah.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, that's traveling at 186,000 miles per second, and it's in a vacuum.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_01: If if there was an ocean of water between us, between the sun and the and the earth, which would obviously be impossible, what if there's an ocean of water?
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_01: So this it would take 11 minutes for the light to the water.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_00: Oh wow, interesting.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, yeah.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_00: So it slows down by about a third or something, right?
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it slows down.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_01: A diamond it really, really impacts the speed of light.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_01: More than most substances.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, like a lot more than most substances.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_01: The speed of light inside of a diamond is 80,000 miles per second.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_00: Oh wow.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_00: So this is a hundred thousand miles per second slower than speed of light in a vacuum.
• 14:53
  unknown: Okay.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_01: 106,000 miles per second slower.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_01: So it's greatly diminished.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_01: And what happens then is when light changes speed, it bends.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_01: And it so white light separates then because it is made up of all of the colors.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_01: It's not a universal change in speed.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_01: In other words, red light is affected differently than blue light.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_01: And so what happens then is they all bend, they all refract at slightly different angles, which causes them to separate out into Roiggy Biv, the colors of the rainbow, which is awesome.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_01: So when you do this then in a diamond, light enters that diamond, and then bouncing off, it's it's reflecting off the inside surfaces of the diamond.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_01: But it it's it's separated out because of that dramatic change in speed.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_01: You get this big splay or this huge rainbow of the visible colors of light.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so light is being you know refracted or bent at every little surface that this diamond has in it.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_00: It's being bent a lot, but why is it being bent a lot?
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_00: Why more than other gems?
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_00: Why, why, why diamond is it particularly?
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so um it has to do with the fact that when light enters something, it interacts with the matter that it enters, and diamonds are really densely packed.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_01: Um it's interacting with densely packed matter and electrons.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_00: So it's more dense, so it's bending things more when the light kind of comes in there, kind of breaking this light apart a lot more and creating that really beautiful sparkle.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it is that diamonds, they're stunning when you look at them up close.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_00: They sparkle so a good diamond.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, a good diamond, a well-cut diamond, well polished, lots of little surfaces on it to do a lot of this diffraction and bending of light.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_00: But that density of diamond, you know, that's intimately related to how diamonds form on earth and how we synthetically make them as well.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_00: So let's dive into that.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_00: There's many different ways that diamonds can form on earth, and a couple major ones.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_01: Man, what are we talked a lot about diamonds and we haven't gotten into any geology yet?
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_01: I know, right?
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_01: It's amazing.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, they're they're super cool.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_00: The industry of them, and I think this for me is the beauty of doing this with you is I love learning about this stuff.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, a lot of this stuff I didn't know, I didn't know the details of it before this.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_00: So this is great.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_00: This is all all super fun.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um okay, yeah, anyway.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_00: So let's let's get back to it here.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_00: We had we're talking about diamonds and them being high pressure, they need some high pressure to form.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_00: So we're gonna go through the sort of four ways on earth that diamonds can form naturally.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_00: And there's some misconceptions out there about this, isn't there?
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, there are, for sure.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I actually get this a lot.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_01: There's a common misconception that diamonds form from coal.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of people know that coal is primarily made of carbon.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_01: And a lot of people know that diamond is made of carbon.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_01: That is not the way diamond forms.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, it doesn't form from coal being subjected to heat and pressure.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_01: So, what we're gonna do now is we're gonna get into the four ways that result in the formation of diamonds.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_01: So, just to summarize these up before we delve like a little bit deeper into each one of them, uh, diamonds form four ways.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_01: One is formation uh in the mantle.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um your favorite layer of the earth, if I remember correctly.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_01: Oh my gosh, yeah, it's all about the mantle.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_01: Come on now.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_01: It is.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_01: Um, another is through subduction zones, which we talked about a little bit in the plate tectonics episode two of this podcast.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_01: Another way is by meteor impacts, and the fourth way is diamonds from space.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_01: So we're gonna talk about each one of these in a little bit more detail, the geology behind each one of them, but those are the four ways that diamonds form.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_00: No, that's right.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_00: So they form four ways in in natural things, but the one thing that all of these processes have in common is basically subjecting carbon to very high pressures in moderately low temperatures.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_00: So the formation of diamonds in the mantle, this is where most of the economic diamond deposits come from.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_00: And this is really just one of the crazier things in geology, in geosciences, I think.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_00: So the diamonds are formed deep in the roots of continents and deeper down into the mantle.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_00: So these things are hundreds of kilometers deep.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_00: They don't become stable until about 150 kilometers down in the mantle.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_01: Uh greater than 150 kilometers, right?
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so basically below that, and the mantle has to be kind of cool at those pressures in order for diamonds to be stable.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_00: So, really, it's the roots of continents contain a lot of diamonds.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_00: And so we have to get those diamonds to the surface somehow.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, they're hundreds of kilometers down deep in the earth.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_00: And the way that these happen are these really, really rapid eruptions called Kimberlight pipes.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_00: And they're they're called pipes because they're not really volcanoes in the way that we think of volcanoes, they're just really rapid, quite violent but small eruptions that come, they're source from really deep down in the mantle up to like 500 kilometers down, and they bring up everything.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_00: So they're really small uh at the surface, they're maybe a mile in diameter, if that, and they kind of look like chairs.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_01: For perspective, real quick, a mile diameter is roughly the diameter of the caldera for Mount St.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_01: Helens.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_00: Except there's, you know, in these eruptions, there's no big volcano, there's no like big mountain associated with it.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_00: It's just a single eruption, and then it's kind of done for the most part.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so Jesse, I'd like you to can you paint a picture for people that that don't know as much about volcanology here a little bit.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_01: About what this looks like.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_01: The the analogy these Kimberlite pipes, they're called Kimberlite pipes.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_00: They're called pipes because they they look different than most volcanic, they look like a pipe going down into the earth.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_00: And the the analogy is a carrot, that it's long and narrow, and it kind of gets narrower as you go deeper.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_00: At the surface, it's still pretty narrow, it's a a mile wide at most, and often a fair bit narrower than that.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_00: So it's really like a pipe down into the earth, and it goes hundreds of kilometers deep.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_00: And when this thing erupts, it's a really small volume, not much magma coming up.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_00: It's very gassy, so it has a lot of gases in the magma, which means that as it comes to the surface, it kind of starts to bubble a lot more too.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_00: And it creates this really rapid, really sort of violent but small eruption.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_00: And what this does is it just rips up everything in its path.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_00: As it comes up through the crust, through the mantle, it just rips up everything.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's where diamonds are being pulled off the edges of the mantle during this eruption and being carried up into onto the surface.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_01: So you're saying that the diamonds formed deep in the mantle and then were ripped out of wherever they formed from and however they formed.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_01: They were ripped out by this volcanic activity and brought up to the surface that way.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_01: So there's like when when you find these diamonds, then you're finding them with a whole host of other volcanic rocks.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_00: There's a whole load of other crap in.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: These volcanic eruptions that are not, you know, the same as the diamonds.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_00: And there can be a whole bunch of different populations of diamonds from different layers of the earth.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_00: It rips through everything.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_00: So you really get samples from a big transect through the mantle and the crust of the earth when in this eruption.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_01: So you're saying that the conditions are right for diamond formation deep in the continental roots.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_01: Then there must be a ton of diamonds below Canada and below North America.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's that there's definitely like loads of diamonds buried hundreds of kilometers deep in the in Earth's mantle.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_00: That we will never get to.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that brings up an interesting point.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, Kimberlites, we've humans have never witnessed a Kimberlite eruption.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_00: One of these small, you know, very violent, very small eruptions that brings diamonds to the surface.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_00: The oldest ones are like a few hundred million years, 600, 800, a billion years old or something.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_00: So they don't go back all the way into Earth history, at least not that we can see.
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_00: So this is where our research comes in.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_00: If there's a diamond on the surface that looks like it formed in the deep mantle, it had to come up through a Kimberlight eruption.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_00: And so we can tell something about the roots of the continents by having those diamonds preserved.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_00: And so we can look at the oldest diamonds and we can understand how the oldest continents form.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_00: And diamonds tell us about the roots.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_00: You know, most of the diamonds, the diamonds I'm studying, the diamonds that we most of us have when we buy them in a jewelry shop, almost all of those come from this type of mechanism, forming deep in the mantle.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_00: They can grow big, beautiful, clear crystals, and then they're erupted up in these small eruptions that are called Kimberlites.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_00: But that's not the only way that diamonds are formed.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_00: That's just one of the main ways.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_01: So that these, though, that form from this way from the mantle that get brought up by these volcanic eruptions, right?
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_01: So they're found at the surface, and sometimes they're near the surface.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_01: And sometimes then, like in the movie Blood Diamond, because I know a lot of people are thinking about this, they're images of it.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_01: They're standing in rivers, you know, picking these diamonds out, right?
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_01: Those are what we that's it's a lot like panning for gold with that.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_01: These what we in geology call placer deposits.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_01: Can you talk about that a second?
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_01: Like, why would diamonds be found in these rivers like that?
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's a great point.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_00: It's because they're so they're dense and they're stable.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_00: So gold is super heavy, right?
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_00: Diamonds, they're super heavy, they're really dense.
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_00: And so when you get uh when a river cuts through one of these Kimberlite eruptions or one of these areas that contains diamonds, those diamonds will be concentrated by the river into certain areas, you know, like a little curve, a bend in the river, or something like that.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_00: They'll be concentrated by the water by this hydrologic equation.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_01: So the water had nothing to do with the formation of it, it just simply cut through one of these pipes that the diamonds have been brought to the or near the surface, that weathering and erosion then took it and and then concentrated deposits in certain sections of a river.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_00: That's exactly right.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_01: So these diamonds then form under this certain recipe, this cocktail of of temperatures and pressures in the mantle.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_01: Let's transition then into another way that diamonds can form in subduction zones.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_01: And this is really interesting to me.
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_01: So super cool.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_01: It is.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_01: If you think back to the plate tectonics episode, a subduction zone is an area where you have these two lithospheric plates that are converging.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_01: And one of those plates is dense enough to subduct, which means it kind of descends at an angle below the overriding plate.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_01: So it's it's like this vice that you have, you these plates are squeezing together.
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_01: One of them is dense enough because it's made up of oceanic crust, which is much denser, and so it begins to subduct below either another oceanic crust or a continental crust.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_01: So what happens then is as this plate descends, it's getting subjected to increasing uh temperatures and pressures.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_01: And then, like from a logical standpoint, then are you going to get to the necessary recipe of pressures and temperatures?
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_01: So, can you talk about that?
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_01: Then is that is that a likely scenario in subduction zones?
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_00: It does, it definitely does occur.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_00: And this is a relatively recent you know, uh recognition by geoscientists that diamonds do form in what are called these ultra-high pressure terrains, which is the vice analogy is perfect.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_00: When you squeeze two things between the vice, you it increases in pressure.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you're right, turn that corkscrew, crank it down, two continents colliding.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_00: That's the most common way.
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_00: Is when you get two continents colliding, when the Himalayas, think of the modern Himalayas, we're forming diamonds under these extreme pressure conditions, really, really high pressures.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_00: And so you do form diamonds in there.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_00: They're often fairly small, and they're not really like the gem quality ones that we as humans value so much, but we do absolutely form diamonds in these types of settings.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_01: Which makes me think of something else.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_01: You said we they're not gem quality, but you know, we use a diamonds for a lot of other things, right?
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, we use them for cutting and for for tools and things like that.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_01: And so the first way that we said diamond formation in the mantle is easily the most important diamond formation uh for the world.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_01: But that idea is being questioned a little bit with perhaps the more industrial use diamonds being formed in subduction zones, not necessarily gem quality, but um, there's a paper that we can link in the podcast to this, but the that calls that into question.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, yeah, interesting.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_00: So, I mean that all that also kind of brings up uh the other couple mechanisms that can form diamonds on earth, and and they all rely on this high pressure, basically squeezing in the vice, really high pressures.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_00: Another one that's really interesting is meteorite impacts.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_00: So, when a particularly when a large meteor comes and hits the surface of the earth, it can pressurize any carbon that's around high enough to form these really small diamonds, right?
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_01: Which you could get with the rocks that are around, right?
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_01: If you got limestone or these sedimentary rocks that are around that have abundant carbon in them, right?
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_01: You get this meteor that slams into earth, uh, high pressures, the right temperature pressure combination, and you can create diamonds, which is really interesting because there are these very tiny diamonds that have been found around the Winslow, Arizona Meteor Impact.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's uh so I think it's called Meteor Impact is what it is, near Winslow, Arizona.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_00: In this case, it's called Meteor Crater uh Meteor Crater National Landmark.
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, yeah.
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_01: So very tiny diamonds have been found around the the meteor crater impact zone in Winslow, Arizona.
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_01: Uh just fascinating.
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_01: One, because the place is just so freaking cool anyway.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_01: It's because it's a giant meteor that slammed into the desert floor in Arizona.
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, and it's perfect.
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_00: It's like your classic meteor crater.
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's beautiful.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's a beautiful place to go visit.
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so the meteorite picture.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, sorry, go ahead.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_00: No, I'm I know what you're gonna say.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_00: Go.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_00: Let's do this because that's really, really cool.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, so yeah, these meteorites can, you know, hit this with this big explosion on the surface of the earth, like a natural explosion, right?
• 29:29
  SPEAKER_00: But actually, there's companies out there that make diamonds by basically blowing up a bomb in an enclosed place and putting a bunch of carbon in there, and then they form these nano diamonds because the pressures get so high by just exploding a bomb.
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_01: Which is really cool because the carbon that they use is uh the same substance that we use in pencil lead.
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, interesting.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_00: That's pretty cool.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_00: It's graphite.
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_00: So just put some graphite around a bomb, blow it up, you get nano diamonds, then you can use for cutting and polishing and all this kind of stuff.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_00: It is so cool.
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_00: All right, yeah.
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_00: So the fourth way that diamonds are formed naturally.
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I mean, what is it, Chris?
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's diamonds from space.
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_01: So some meteorites have relatively large amounts of these nano diamonds you just referred to them a second ago, which are diamonds with a diameter, get this, of a few billionths of a meter.
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_01: Oh that's crazy.
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, these are really, really tiny, tiny things.
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_01: They could have uh, you know, we don't know.
• 30:25
  SPEAKER_01: Like they could have formed from these high-speed collisions in space that created the right pressure temperatures.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_01: There's this recipe that we've talked about, but then um, what would the source of carbon have been?
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_01: It would have had to have been from something outside of Earth.
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_01: Uh that's you know, that's really all we know.
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_01: It didn't come from us, yeah.
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, those are the four ways in which diamonds form.
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, deep in the mantle, by far the most important for commercial use and and making their way onto people's fingers for weddings and things like this.
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_01: But um, and then subduction zones, meteor impacts, and then from space.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_01: So those are the that's a summary of the way that diamonds form, unless, and I want to hit this because I think it's really cool.
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_00: The synthetic diamonds.
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, they're some this is also a massive industry.
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_00: And most of the industrial uses of diamonds, which they embed diamonds into saw blades so they can cut through concrete, so they can cut through any material really.
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, diamond is so dense, it's so hard, it makes a perfect cutting material, it's used for polishing, uh, cutting drill bits, all this kind of stuff.
• 31:33
  SPEAKER_00: It's a huge industry.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um most of those diamonds are produced synthetically.
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_01: We have gotten very good at making synthetic diamonds that are gem quality.
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_01: Those are really, really pretty gemstones.
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_01: They're chemically identical, they just don't have the impurities, those black carbon flecks that all the other gemstones have, the natural ones have.
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_01: I wanted to highlight there's a company, uh, it's called Life Gem.
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um, this this is not a sponsor of the podcast, by the way.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_00: We're not being sponsored by Life Gem.
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_01: But it's really kind of cool story.
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_01: They will take the remains of a loved one, a pet.
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_01: They will take those ashes, which is essentially graphite, into a press that replicates the geologic forces that are needed to turn graphite into diamond.
• 32:21
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, uh, so your your pet or your loved one can can last forever.
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and then it's really kind of cool though.
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's a sophisticated process.
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_00: And yeah, it's no joke to turn to turn some ashes into a diamond.
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_01: No, it is not.
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_01: It's just uh it's an interesting thing.
• 32:37
  SPEAKER_01: And in fact, uh, I did the I did some looking on this.
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_01: A one karat diamond of a loved one, um, which is a high quality diamond, it was gonna cost you twenty thousand dollars through this company.
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_01: That's steep.
• 32:51
  SPEAKER_01: That's a lot, and you know this because you've just been through the process.
• 32:55
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that hurts.
• 32:55
  SPEAKER_00: That hurts.
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I yeah, that that's interesting because I I there were synthetic diamond options.
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, okay, they weren't from the ashes of my beloved dog or anything like that, but they um, you know, it was about the quarter of a price of a natural diamond.
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_00: So they've gotten really good at making these things, these synthetic diamonds, gem quality diamonds.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_00: And I mean, they're near they're near perfect because they're synthetically made.
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_00: They can make it fairly cheaply.
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_01: It's impressive if you think about it.
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_01: It's so complicated to replicate the forces that exist deep inside the earth is not an easy feat.
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so let's let's just hit on the the color.
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_00: You you touched on it briefly, but let's let's touch on the color of diamonds as well, because natural diamonds have this coloration too, and it's the same process that yellow, you know, relates to to nitrogen, and that's nitrogen in the in the crystal structure.
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_00: And blue diamonds, which are also very valuable diamonds, will have boron in them.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_00: And the diamonds that I was referring to, really old diamonds, and some of the oldest diamonds on earth, have been sitting in uranium-rich deposits for billions of years, and this radiation turns them green, actually.
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_00: So a lot of the diamonds in these deposits are are kind of greenish, have a greenish.
• 34:04
  SPEAKER_01: Which I think I would like.
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_01: I would too like I like emeralds.
• 34:08
  SPEAKER_01: You know, if I had a if I had a do-over, I don't I don't have a lot of do-overs, right?
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, if I had a do-over, though, I think Jenny's engagement ring would have been an emerald.
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_01: One thing that I think is interesting, rubies and sapphires and emeralds, they form within the earth's crust.
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_01: You know, and and that's much those these are easier for us to replicate because the conditions aren't as extreme as what the conditions require for the formation of diamond.
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_01: And I just that's uh it's an interesting point.
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_00: Diamonds are formed really deep in the earth, and it's hard to replicate those conditions, you know, synthetically.
• 34:41
  SPEAKER_00: So they're harder to make um artificial versions of.
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_00: So all right.
• 34:46
  SPEAKER_00: Well, with that, that's a summary of diamonds and uh how they form, the sort of a bit of the history of them, the industrial uses of diamonds.
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_00: So what's coming up?
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so in two weeks, we're gonna we're gonna have an episode on the Grand Teton National Park.
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we got a lot of good feedback about Yellowstone National Park, and Grand Teton National Park is a spectacular place with some really cool geoscience stories and and biological stories.
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_00: It's one of my favorite places on the planet.
• 35:11
  SPEAKER_00: It's a beautiful place.
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_00: So we're gonna highlight Grand Teton National Park, and then we're gonna we're gonna launch off into our interview series with uh an interview with a really interesting person who's a nationally renowned biology teacher and very, very long serving Yellowstone Park Ranger.
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_00: So some interesting stuff coming up.
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_00: I can't wait.
• 35:31
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's gonna be awesome.
• 35:32
  SPEAKER_00: I can't wait.
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_00: So, with that, thanks for listening and uh stay tuned.
• 35:37
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, cheers.