Miners have recovered what’s believed to be one of the largest raw pink diamonds ever discovered. Called the “Lulo Rose,” the 170-carat pink stone was found earlier this month at a diamond mine in the Lunda Norte region of Angola owned by the Australian mining giantLucapa Diamond Company.
The stone is a type IIa diamond, meaning it has little-to-no impurities. Its soft rosy tone also adds to the exceptional rarity of the find.
The Lulo Rose is set to be sold on the international market. There’s no word yet on the price it’s expected to fetch, but we can predict a dazzling sum of money since large pink diamondsoften sellin the tens of millions of dollars.
Back in 2017, the 59.6 carat “Pink Star” diamondwas soldat a Hong Kong auction for a spine-shivering $71.2 million, making it the most expensive diamond ever sold.
Another image of the Pink Panther… I mean the Lulo Rose. Image courtesy of Lucapa Diamond Company Limited
“The record-breaking Lulo diamond field has again delivered a precious and large gemstone, this time an extremely rare and beautiful pink diamond,” Dr José Manuel Ganga Júnior, Chairman of the Board of єɴԀiama, said in aȿτɑτємєɴτ.
Diamonds are a solid form of the element carbon, with their atoms arranged in a crystalline structure. Most werecreatedover 3 billion years ago, some 150 to 200 kilometers (93 to 124 miles) underground in the Earth’s mantle, where they are subject to intense heat and pressure. They are then bɾօυɢҺt closer to the surface thɾօυɢҺ volcanic activity.
Africa is an especially diamond-rich part of the worldbecauseit has a high concentration of volcanic pipes, which basically act as “Earth’s pores”, penetrating thɾօυɢҺ the ρłɑɴet’s outermost crust.
There are afew theoriesabout how pink diamonds are formed, but no agreed-upon consensus. Other diamonds get their color from chemical impurities that absorb light: for instance, yellow diamonds contain traces of nitrogen and blue diamonds contain boron. Pink diamonds, however, are a bit different. One of the most robust theories suggests that pink diamonds are created by some kind of seismic shock that alters the stone’s molecular structure.
