Diamonds from the Basement

Most of us have ideas about diamonds, how they're valuable, look mighty fine, the hardest substance on Earth, made of highly-organized carbon, have industrial uses, and are even useful in superconductors. (Maybe the lethal satellite in Diamonds Are Forever isn't so far-fetched?) The ones you see in jewellery stores or up for auction are specially cut and polished, rough (or "raw) diamonds look quite a bit different, and don't fetch quite a high price. Secular geologists assign dates of somewhere around a billion years old, but since radiocarbon exists in them, they are actually thousands of years old. They're also a bit of a mystery.

So where do they come from?

Image credit: Pixabay / Aenigmatis-3D

Diamond deposits (and, naturally, diamond mines) are not everywhere on the planet. Also, they're unstable. They had to form way down yonder with Earth's basement rocks, and made the journey to the surface without breaking down into graphite. Creationary scientists have models involving the Genesis Flood that can bring diamonds from way down there up to where they can be reached without breaking down.

The clue to the origin of diamonds is their location. Diamond deposits are found in only a few isolated locations around the world. Historically, diamonds have been found and mined in southern and central Africa, where some 49% of diamonds originate. However, today large deposits are found in specific regions of Siberia, Canada, Australia, and Brazil.

The common denominator is unique areas of particular rock types known geologically as the “cratons.”1 Cratons consist of the foundational basement rocks of the continents, before they broke apart during the Flood and were covered by fossil-bearing sedimentary layers. These basement rocks were likely formed back in the Creation Week.

Diamonds apparently formed at the roots of these cratons. Why do we think this?

One clue is the radioisotope markers in the diamonds that match those of the basement rocks. (Based on occasional minute inclusions within them, diamonds are claimed to be 1–3.2 billion years old.2 While these secular dates are wrong, the relative radioisotope dating is helpful, indicating that diamonds were formed earlier than the Flood deposits.)

Another clue is that these craton roots are in the diamond stability zone.

You can read the article in its entirety by clicking on "Dazzling Diamonds by Special Delivery". 

 

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