Diamonception: Miners find diamond trapped inside another diamond
The Matryoshka diamond is nicknamed for the Russian nesting dolls.
The Matryoshka diamond is two gems in one.
In weird diamond news recently, we've seen Apple designer Jony Ive's all-diamond ring and a $2 million diamond painted in one of the blackest materials ever created. Top that! OK: Here's a diamond that formed inside of another diamond.
Alrosa Group, a partially state-owned mining company in Russia, announced the wild find on Oct. 4. The tiny gemstone has an even tinier diamond moving freely about inside of it. An X-ray view of the stone gives us a better look at its internal makeup.
This X-ray view lets us look inside the Matryoshka diamond.
Alrosa scientists believe the internal diamond was the first to form and the external structure came later in the stone's growth process. It is estimated to be over 800 million years old.
"As far as we know, there were no such diamonds in the history of global diamond mining yet," said Alrosa's Oleg Kovalchuk. "This is really a unique creation of nature, especially since nature does not like emptiness. Usually, some minerals are replaced by others without cavity formation."
The gem is now nicknamed the "Matryoshka diamond," after the hollow Russian nesting dolls where the larger dolls each have a smaller one inside.
Alrosa has not said what it plans to do with the diamond, but it likely won't end up as bling on a ring.
