Aug 29 2006
Could Australia rise to the top of the diamond pipe again?Macquarie University研究员克雷格·奥尼尔（Craig O’Neill）认为，他的研究可以在澳大利亚开放新的钻石田。
It turns out that diamonds are not forever after all. And that may be a good thing for Australia’s $100-million a year diamond industry.
By determining how and where diamonds form, disappear, and re-form, geoscientists from Sydney’s Macquarie University can now indicate the best places to look for them. And in Australia that means a broad arc of country stretching from the Kimberleys to southwest Queensland.
研究团队负责人克雷格·奥尼尔（Craig O’Neill）博士说：“澳大利亚正面临钻石干旱。”
克雷格（Craig）是16名年轻研究人员之一，作为新鲜科学国家竞赛的一部分，首次向公众展示其作品。欧洲杯线上买球一位新鲜的科学家将赢得英国澳大利亚英国的研究之旅，并有机会在伦敦的皇家机构介绍他们的作品。
“我们希望我们的工作能够帮助澳大利亚行业找到更多的钻石，并长大成为世界上最大的钻石。”
By combining laboratory results on the behaviour of rocks and diamonds under pressure, O’Neill and colleagues have been able to simulate using computers the conditions deep under the Earth’s continents, where diamonds form. Their results suggest that diamonds may be much more widespread than previously thought.
“People used to assume that once formed, diamonds were pretty much indestructible, and stayed fixed in one place at the bottom continents. It took some violent event, such as a volcanic eruption to bring them to the surface,” says Craig.
“But we found that down where they actually form, it’s more mushy than solid rock, and the diamonds, far from being indestructible, can really take a beating, sometimes being destroyed entirely.”
“The challenge is actually getting them to the surface,” says O’Neill. “That requires a very violent type of volcanism called kimberlites. These are like geological atomic bombs. Fortunately they’re pretty rare.”
研究表明，许多开始挖掘的地方。“为了在地面上找到钻石，您都需要深层地下和金伯利特火山钻石。这似乎大部分是在大陆茂密的大陆夹在一起的地方。”克雷格说。
In Australia, this occurs in a broad swathe from the Kimberleys in Western Australia, across the Northern Territory to southwest Queensland.
“The most interesting part is what the work tells us about processes deep underground. The Earth has a whole secret life happening down there we know very little about.”
最好的新鲜科学家将赢得由英国澳大利亚英国理事会提供的研究之旅。