The Popigai Crater

[knocker]

Is this actually correct.

The Russian government has revealed that a vast quantity of high-quality diamonds rests beneath a Siberian impact crater, numbering in the "trillions of carats".

The Popigai crater, 100km-wide and located in the isolated north of the country, was formed roughly 35.7 million years ago by the impact of an asteroid estimated to be between five and eight kilometres wide. Its collision created a wealth of impact diamonds -- which form when an existing diamond seam is hit by a large falling body -- in such quantities that could, it is claimed, supply the world diamond market for the next 3,000 years.

http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2012-09/18/russian-diamond-smorgasbord

Doubtfull according to this.

Overhyped in the News

Lots of news stories have reported Popigai Crater as a major diamond deposit containing trillions of carats of gemstone-quality diamonds that Russia has kept secret. This is not true.

This diamond deposit has been known to researchers throughout the world since the early 1990s when many of them visited Popigai Crater with permission and support from the Russian government. There are no public documents showing that Popigai is a minable deposit of gemstone-quality diamonds.

Popigai is an unlikely threat to other diamond mining operations because the deposit is thought to contain small industrial-quality diamonds. About 98% of today's industrial diamonds are produced in laboratories because it is more economical to "make industrial diamonds" than it is to mine them.

http://geology.com/articles/popigai-crater-diamonds/

[Methuselah]

That's a shame, Malcolm. I'd love to see the diamond trade destroyed!