The outbreak of renewed interest in a forgotten was the Native field impacted diamond, which geologists have found back in the 70-ies of the last century, gave rise to a wave of rumors and fantasy projections. Whether such diamonds is only in Russia? Can they suddenly bring down the world economy? Let us try to understand these issues.

About the impact (impact is any external influence on our planet) diamonds, of course, knew before, but the search has always been considered not particularly advantageous both technical and economic points of view. Therefore, almost anywhere in the world to develop such fields seriously studied. But why? There are a number of reasons, which is due to the properties themselves of carbon units, the resulting impact wandering the heavenly bodies on the surface of our planet.

Recall that the energy of the collisions of cosmic bodies with the Earth's surface, which leads to the impact of the breed (not only, by the way, diamonds), depends on its mass and velocity. The rate of convergence of two bodies (the Earth and the asteroid) lies in the range of 11.2 to 72.8 km per second. Minimum value determined by the second cosmic speed, and the maximum is the vector sum of the second space speed, speed of rotation of the Earth around the Sun and speed meteoroids away from the Earth. It should also be noted that a strong and dense atmosphere slows the intruder stronger with increasing its diameter as it moves ahead gas, compressing it and gradually setimagepath.

From this we can conclude that not every impact of a meteorite with the Earth able to create the impact of the breed. This happens only when the speed collision exceeds a value of 5 kilometers per second (at values below this meteorite may simply land on the ground, or "hollowing" crater, throwing rocks, but not arrange explosion power required). But why in some cases this explosion does occur? Sharp braking cosmic body in a collision with the planet's surface leads to the fact that a lot of kinetic energy is converted to potential (according to the law of conservation of energy), resulting in a shock wave compression, which moves from the impact point forward (in the rocks of the target is the earth's crust) and backward (in substance drummer - cosmic body).

This is the force of compression can be 100-300 HPa, and the time to reach maximum compression ratio is measured first billion of a second. Such pressure is enough to make carbon, evenly distributed in terrestrial rocks, began to concentrate in the diamond. In addition, compression causes heating of the substance to several tens of thousands of degrees for as short a space of time-which also contributes to the formation of precious to us in the form of carbon. In short, the collision creates on the surface of the same conditions for the formation of diamonds, as in the mantle, only takes a very short time.

This, by the way, use creating synthetic diamonds - so, in 1967, R. E. Hanneman and his staff (USA) at shock pressure from 700 to 1400 KB and a temperature of about 1000? C instantly got artificial crystals. Interestingly, classic diamond in this experiment was mixed with lonsdeylite - modification with special hexagonal structure. Its not see in diamonds from kimberlite pipes, however, the impact of crystals lonsdeylite impurities are common.

At the same time, the impact of diamonds never enough - as meteorite (formed from carbon in the composition of the rocks heavenly guest)and the earth. The first is because in meteorites carbon little, and the second - because most of the species in the explosion simply thrown away. In General, diamonds, extracted from impactites, are mostly fragments, part of the resulting fragmentation of the samples, or formless grain. As such "crumbs" notice, is quite difficult. However, sometimes some of them are lamellar crystals of one millimeter in diameter with emerging faces and edges, which can be identified immediately.

In addition, the properties of such diamonds dramatically otlichayutsya from those of their counterparts born ' natural" way. So, they are much more impurity silicon, magnesium, calcium, i.e. elements of the diamond "ash". In addition, their anisotropic crystals, they don't Shine in x-rays, but have a characteristic orange-red light in the ultraviolet. At the same time, as research has shown, the luminescence spectrum of diamonds are continuous, that is caused by rapid solidification at a terribly high pressures.

Finally, the scientists found that the diamonds, the resultant impact is that other, as polycrystals, composed of tiny monokristallov located, however, orderly manner. This property, as well as a significant share lonsdeylite impurities lead to extraordinary strength of these forms of diamonds. Because of this, they should be more in demand in the technique of decoration of them still will not work, because they are dull and difficult to cut.

However, due to the fact that these microscopic crystals of rare and scattered around the world, from idea development impact of fields have long been abandoned. In addition, the method of Hanneman made it does not need artificial diamonds with such properties were to produce enough easy and profitable. So when in the 1970s the Soviet geologists found on the border of Krasnoyarsk region and Yakutia in the area of the Native astrobleme (big destroyed and errodyrubcura impact crater) deposits impacted diamond, the stock of which is estimated at several trillion carats (for comparison, the entire stock "normal" diamonds of Yakutia is estimated hardly more than a billion carats), nobody gave it no special value. The government of the USSR decided to bet on production of synthetic diamonds, guided by the fact that this region is sparsely populated, with no developed infrastructure, and develop the Native field will be several times more expensive than to put hundreds of factories for the production of artificial carbon crystals. The information about the Deposit was classified, and it itself is conserved.

It would lay the Popigai diamonds unclaimed, however, as always in Russia, helped misfortune. Due to the destruction of industry at the end of the last century the production of synthetic diamonds have declined, whereas in the world it developed. And here it is time to cast a "Popigai map", that is, to present all mass and cheap ultra diamonds. After all, according to scientists, their stocks "stop the world for at least 3 thousand years", and the massive use of these minerals in manufacturing and electronics capable of producing a technical revolution. Moreover, our country is, in effect, become a monopolist in the market of this unique and valuable raw materials (the impact of the field in Australia and South America, too, is not yet developed, compared with the native "treasure" look more than modest).

However, here we must act very cautiously. Oddly enough, it is a huge number of unique diamonds and can play havoc with the whole world economy, which has from the recent crisis has not recovered. Therefore, the Deputy Director of the Institute "Yakutniproalmaz" Gennady Nikitin warns: "Popigai diamonds can reverse everything, and then what will happen to prices on this market - it is unclear". Other economists believe that a "diamond needle" may become for our country even more destructive than the existing oil - if only to sell raw materials, no matter how valuable it is, the incentive to the development of its own production quickly lost.

However, the latter can be avoided if you sell is not the crystals themselves, and made on their basis devices and spare parts. It stimulates the growth of the industry, will give profitable orders scientists on the development of new technologies and will involve in this process the General population, whose livelihood, respectively, will increase. And the diamond market will not collapse because of the ready products are always more expensive than raw materials. In this case, the native diamonds will act as not destroyers, and superhard saviors of our Fatherland.