gemstones

Detrital zircon grains of an igneous rock as seen through an incident light microscope. Photo credit: Martin Lindner. From: Költringer, Chiara. “Detrital Zircons: How the Age of a Resistant Mineral Can Help to Reconstruct the Climate of the Past.” Science. EGU Blogs: Climate: Past, Present & Future (blog), May 20, 2021.

Geology

November 21, 2023

Case Study: detrital zircon

[ED: On the occasion of releasing a new dataset: ON-004-04D Data tables of detrital zircon U-Pb…

Diamonds in the rough, note the regular octahedral forms and trigons (of positive and negative relief) formed by natural chemical etching. Photo credit: Wikimedia.

Minerals

February 19, 2018

What are diamonds?

Diamonds are formed from pure carbon, one of the most abundant elements on planet Earth. Diamonds, even from ancient times,…