"A diamond lasts forever, and one lasts forever." This well-known quote speaks to the preciousness of diamonds, and the most expensive diamond ever seen at auctions around the world is a 59.6 ct pink diamond called the Pink Star, which broke the global diamond auction record in 2017 at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Center for $71.2 million.
However, this record may be forgotten in the future, because yesterday, The Australian Lukapa Diamond Company announced that it had discovered a 170-carat pink diamond in the Lulo Mine in northeast Angola, Africa, the largest pink diamond ever found in the world, and the rarest and purest type IIa natural diamond, which the company has named "Lulo Rose".
The outside world has sighed that the 59.6 carat pink diamond has been auctioned for a sky-high price of 71.2 million US dollars, and this 170 carat flawless pink diamond is only afraid that it will exceed 100 million US dollars, or even a priceless treasure.
Diamonds because of the sparkling, otherworldly, rare and rare and extraordinary value, has always been for ordinary people and magnates to chase the door, and pink diamond is the best diamond, accounting for less than 0.1% of the total number of diamonds mined each year, of which more than 0.2 carats account for only 10%, more than 0.5 carats are even more countless, even a palm can not be filled, you can imagine how rare a 170 carat pink diamond is, may be the largest pink diamond found on the earth in 300 years.
Diamonds are originally colorless crystals of carbon, and they are deeply loved because of their high refractive index and shining under the light. Due to the impurities and imperfections they contain, diamonds appear in different colors, which in turn affects their value.
The most common diamond contains nitrogen atoms and is yellowish, the yellower the lower the value, while the blue, green or pink diamond is very rare, the darker the color, the higher the value, of which pink is regarded as a fine product, and pink to intense red, is the best of the best.
Unlike diamonds, which exhibit other colors, diamonds are pink because the diamond is distorted by shear pressure lattice during formation, resulting in 550 nanometer absorption band plastic deformation. Because the probability of this occurring during diamond formation is very low, this maverick way of birth makes pink diamonds extremely rare and naturally extremely valuable.
Like all other diamonds, methods of synthetic pink diamonds are currently being found. According to Sally Eaton-Magana, a senior research scientist at the Gemological Institute of America (GIA), there are roughly three of these approaches:
One is to expose the diamond containing nitrogen impurities to radiation, and then put it into an environment of 600 degrees to 1000 degrees, forming a nitrogen-vacancy center defect in the crystal lattice, thus showing a pink color, and most of the current human pink diamonds in the world are produced by this method.
The second is manufactured by chemical vapor deposition, which uses 520 nanometer spectroscopy to produce orange-pink in the manufacturing process.
The third is to add a large amount of silicon to the chemical vapor deposition method, and when the diamond is exposed to ultraviolet light, it will produce a reversible color change from pink to blue.
So look, diamonds are actually not so rare and precious, the current artificial diamonds, purity and color have been comparable to or even more than natural diamonds, the output is even more amazing, but can not get the birth certificate of the international authoritative organization and penniless. This is the same as the so-called circle layer of human society, your origin determines your circle layer, even if you work hard and are excellent, you still can't enter some so-called mainstream circles. Like diamonds, the more people who go in, the lower the value of the circle, and how can they maintain their position on the top?