Tiny diamonds thought to be up to 4.3 billion years old have been found to be nothing more than synthetic diamond polish used by the people who first examined them, a new study has found.
Back in 2007, geologists thought they had literally found diamonds in the rough when they announced that minuscule gems discovered inside zircon crystals from Australia The discovery set the science world abuzz since it suggested primordial earthhad cooled down much faster than previously thought.
Butscientists at the University of California, Riverside say the gemstones are actually fragments of synthetic diamond paste that slipped through tiny cracks when the ancientzircon crystals werepolished to take into the lab,.
“We confirm the presence of diamonds in their zircons but the diamonds we find are fragments of polishing compound,” the scientists wrote in astudyin the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters.
Research included taking pictures of the gems with a powerfulelectron microscope which showed the corners to be sharp instead of bumpy like real diamonds.
After this debunking, the oldest diamonds in the world are now ones aged closer to 3.2 billion years old.
