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Researchers have discovered a rare mineral that comes directly from Earth’s lower mantle

“For jewelers and buyers, the cut, color and clarity of the diamond are important and inclusions – those black spots that annoy a jeweler – are a gift to us,” he said Oliver Schooner in a press release from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and co-lead of the study.

As for davemaoite’s unlikely rise, it is comment for me nature, “It’s the strength of the diamond that holds impurities under high pressure.”

A specialized X-ray technology known as a synchrotron revealed the new mineral

Tschauner and his collaborators, including Xichun Huang, a geochemist at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV), obtained the diamonds before using a specialized radiography called a synchrotron. This allowed them to analyze its internal structure.

They discovered a new crystalline material they called “davemaoite,” a name chosen to honor experimental geophysicist Ho-Kwang “Dave” Mao, who pioneered many of the methods Tschauner and his colleagues use today.

Since then, Davemaoite has been approved as a completely new natural mineral by the Committee on New Minerals, Nomenclature and Classification of the International Mineralogical Association.

Davemaoite meteorites can be launched to the earth’s surface

Tschauner’s discovery of davemaoite illustrates one of two ways to detect high-pressure minerals in nature: from within meteorites or between 410 and 560 miles below the earth’s surface.

Even better, Tschauder actually made headway down the ancient path (within meteorites) when he discovered the mineral “bridgmanite” in 2014.

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