A unique type of diamond has been discovered in Australia for the first time, but they're invisible to the naked eye.
Metamorphic diamonds are so small it took researchers almost 18 months to detect the minerals hidden in the rock
They are only known to exist in six other locations in the world, ranging in size from microscopic right down to nanoscopicResearchers from Queensland's James Cook University found rare metamorphic diamonds in rocks along the Clarke River Fault, west of Paluma in the state's north, according toBut before anyone grabs their mining tools to find their own shiny rock, these diamonds can only be seen using a laser and a microscope according to the university's Ioan Sanislav.
"Don't go to Paluma and start looking for them. Even for us it was very difficult to find them," he said. "We had to analyse many, many thin sections of rock, and to prove the diamonds were there, it took about a year-and-a-half." Metamorphic diamonds are formed in subduction zones, where two land masses collide causing the edge of one tectonic plate to dip below another and sink deep within the earth's interior.
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