The Siberian branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences has revealed that the 100 kilometre wide Popigai Astroblem crater, from a meteorite which hit Earth 35 million years ago, contains a dense deposit of industrial diamonds (good for technological purposes but not jewelry). The deposit was apparently discovered in the 1970’s, but the Soviets decided to keep it a secret so that they didn’t upset a world diamond market that already favoured them. Nikolai Pokhilenko, the head of the Geological and Mineralogical Institute in Novosibirsk, has said that the diamonds include other molecular forms of carbon, and that they could be twice as hard as conventional diamonds. He said the Popigai diamonds could revolutionise the global market in industrial diamonds.
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