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For forty years Russia has kept secret a diamond discovery ten times larger than the rest of the World’s Diamond Reserves
From
CSMonitor – Russia has just declassified news that will shake world gem markets to their core: the discovery of a vast new diamond field containing “trillions of carats,” enough to supply global markets for another 3,000 years.
ITAR-TASS -The resources of super-hard diamonds contained in rocks of the Popigai crypto-explosion structure, are by a factor of ten bigger than the world's all known reserves. We are speaking about trillions of carats, for comparison – present-day known reserves in Yakutia are estimated at one billion carats,” he said
The Soviets discovered the bonanza back in the 1970s beneath a 35-million-year-old, 62-mile diameter asteroid crater in eastern Siberia known as Popigai Astroblem.
They decided to keep it secret, and not to exploit it, apparently because the USSR's huge diamond operations at Mirny, in Yakutia, were already producing immense profits in what was then a tightly controlled world market.
The veil of secrecy was finally lifted over the weekend, and Moscow permitted scientists from the nearby Novosibirsk Institute of Geology and Mineralogy to talk about it with Russian journalists.
According to the official news agency, ITAR-Tass, the diamonds at Popigai are “twice as hard” as the usual gemstones, making them ideal for industrial and scientific uses.
Another interesting question is what other massive resources have been discovered and kept secret ?
Diamonds in mines are usually valued in the range of $100 per carat.
This resource is worth in the range of a few hundred trillion dollars. Although the size of the discovery will likely reduce the price of diamonds.
See more and subscribe to NextBigFuture at 2012-09-19 07:26:44 Source: http://nextbigfuture.com/2012/09/for-forty-years-russia-has-kept-secret.html
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