Diamonds are made of the same substance as the lead in a pencil and coal. The difference is in the arrangement of the atoms; diamonds have tighter atoms than any other substance in the world. How are diamonds made, you might ask. They are formed when carbon is constantly exposed to very high temperatures and under very high pressure. Diamonds are made down under the Earth, below the surface where high temperatures and pressure exist naturally.

How Are Diamonds Made In Nature

At the depth of 180 kilometers, the temperature is very high around 1100 degrees Celsius and 1400 degrees Celsius. Extremely high pressures are produced by rocks pressing down on it. This is how are diamonds made. Other than carbon, nitrogen and sulphur can also be found inside the diamond. If these substances are in a diamond, they can add color to the diamond. Under normal circumstances a diamond is colorless.

If you are wondering where the carbon that makes these diamonds come from, they come from the mantle of the earth. Some are from the bodies and shells of micro-organisms from the oceans a long, long time ago. Organic carbon is buried in rocks that managed to fall down in to the mantle when the earth moved. Movement is due to tectonic plates and the continental drift.

How Are Diamonds Made By Man

To answer the question, how are diamonds made by man, we need to understand that man really likes to look for easier ways to make or do things. When man saw that diamonds are precious gems and people pay great amounts for them, they found a way to make these hard to get stones. A team of scientists has been trying for a long time to make diamonds. In the year 2004, scientists from Carnegie Institution’s Geophysical Laboratory managed to produce gems that are harder than any other crystals.

These man made diamonds were produced using a gas mixture. The crystals that were produced were so hard that the instruments and paraphernalia used to make them broke. The great part about these man made diamonds is they were created in less than a day.

The very complicated process required the crystals to be grown using a special high growth-rate chemical vapor deposition. Then the crystals were exposed to very high pressure and temperatures make them harder. There is then a production of a chemical reaction that yields “carbon rain.” The carbon rain atoms arrange themselves in the same structure as the container or seed used to catch the carbon rain. As they arrange themselves into a tight composition, they turn into man made diamonds.