Really! Buy one get one free! Diamond World's "Matryoshka" is here

I believe many of you have Russian nesting dolls at home. The small doll may seem ordinary, but when you open it, you will find that there is a smaller doll inside. Open this one and there is another one inside. You can open it until the smallest one can no longer fit.

This was my favorite toy when I was a kid, because you only need to buy one to get many, and your curiosity and sense of surprise will be satisfied when you open each nesting doll.

But recently, a new big thing has appeared in the nesting doll world - the "diamond nesting doll". Have you seen it? Not only have I not seen it, but the whole world has also seen it for the first time.

See, there is a cavity inside this diamond. There is another small diamond that is completely separated and can roll inside. Because its structure is similar to a nesting doll, it is named "nesting doll diamond". The total weight of this diamond is 0.62 carats and the size is 4.8*4.9*2.8 mm. The inner cavity capacity of the diamond is 6 cubic millimeters, and the nested diamond weighs about 0.2 carats.

This diamond comes from the Yakutia mine in Russia (the birthplace of nesting dolls, what a coincidence), and experts from the Alrosa mining company discovered this strange gem when they were sorting a batch of diamonds.

"At first, the crystal looked like any other, but upon closer inspection, it was noticed that there was movement within it," they said.

Alrosa's experts then used Raman and infrared spectrometers as well as X-ray microtomography to examine the diamond and found that there were air pockets around the diamond wall and the object moving inside was an independent small diamond.

Although this small diamond is only 800 million years old and can only be considered a "little brother" in the diamond family's average lifespan of 3 billion years, this "little brother" knows how to find a new way and structurally surpasses other elders in the family, successfully ascending to become the first pure natural "double diamond" discovered in the world.

We all know that natural diamonds are usually crystallized at a depth of about several hundred kilometers below the surface. This location is called the ancient continental core root in each continent. It is a single crystal composed of carbon formed under high pressure and high temperature conditions.

Many diamond crystallization processes appear to be related to ocean subduction, which occurs when heavier oceanic plates sink beneath lighter continental plates.

As oceanic plates sink, temperatures rise, forcing fluids out of rocks and sediments. Diamonds crystallize from this thick, salty, carbon-rich fluid that seeps into the ground.

But something obviously went wrong when the nesting diamond crystallized, and instead of forming a single large piece of mineral, small pieces of diamond were sealed into larger pieces of diamond. But the air pocket where the small diamond is now located cannot exist in the face of the huge pressure deep underground.

So when diamonds were formed, there must have been something filling the gaps, but over time, the material in the middle slipped away.

But scientists are still studying what the contents in the middle are. Now we can only see a few guesses.

Because of different assumptions about the inner material, the formation process of this nested diamond will be different. In the final analysis, it is also to explore the question of "which was formed first, the outer diamond or the inner diamond?"

Michael Forster, a postdoctoral researcher in experimental petrology at Macquarie University in Australia, believes that the outer shell formed first. He believes that there was once a trace of salty liquid inside the diamond, and the small diamonds were formed from it. This liquid will easily flow out from the holes or cracks in the larger outer diamond.

The Alrosa mining company that discovered the diamond believes that the small diamond inside was formed first. Alrosa's research experts said that the diamond inside was likely to grow first. His explanation is that the stone core of the small diamond grew too fast, so a layer of porous diamond sand (polycrystalline diamond material, not a complete crystal) covered the diamond core . Then another layer of diamond crystals began to form on top of the polycrystalline sand.

When diamonds are compressed and heated in the mantle, the middle layer of polycrystalline sand dissolves to reveal the tiny diamonds inside.

Other experts believe that diamonds were captured by mantle minerals as they grew. So the cavity was once filled with minerals from the mantle, such as olivine or garnet.

Garnet inclusions in diamond

As for when and how the contents of this double diamond disappeared, some experts believe that they may have gradually seeped out on the way from underground to the surface.

Wang Wuyi, vice president of research and development at GIA (Gemological Institute of America), believes that molten rocks or hot liquids may come into contact with the internal minerals, causing them to liquefy and seep out.

Others believe that the transformation may have occurred on the surface of the earth, where surface water could have continuously interacted with these filling minerals, first making them loose and fragile , and then gradually breaking them down and carrying them away.

However, the two hypotheses of surface outflow are not perfect and have many loopholes. It is impossible to clean the entire cavity by relying solely on flowing water and hydrothermal fluids. Therefore, experts point part of the reason to artificial treatment.

This is because many diamond cleaning processes use hydrofluoric acid, a highly corrosive substance that can dissolve a large portion of known minerals except diamonds.

Before a specific conclusion is drawn, it has become a great pleasure for experts to guess the contents of the diamond. In my opinion, after arriving in Russia, it has upgraded itself into a nesting doll version in order to better integrate into traditional culture.

No matter how it was formed, it must be very exciting and amazing to find it. There is no detailed figure on its value yet, but you can rest assured that I can't afford it.