Hard Labor for sparkling gems
Diamond extraction T E X T : Alexander Kords I L L U S T R A T I O N S : Mathilde Schliebe
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iamonds owe their status as the most precious gemstones in the world to the fact that they are exceedingly rare. This in turn is due to the fact that it is very hard to extract them from the depth of the earth. In order to extract a diamond of a weight of just one gram, around 20 tons of rock must be moved. Temperatures between 1,200 and 1,400 centigrade and enormous pressure are required to create diamonds which is why they form in depths of between 150 and 660 kilometres. The deepest hole ever dug by men, however, is a mere 12 kilometres deep and the Kola borehole, named for the Russian peninsula on which it is located, was not drilled for the purpose of extracting mineral deposits but serves a purely scientific purpose. So how do we get down to the diamonds? The answer is easy: We don’t! They make their way to us.
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