Secret stash of more than a QUADRILLION tons of diamonds hiding below Earth’s surface worth £68,600,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
The Earth has a diamond-encrusted interior that's lined with over a quadrillion tons of the precious stone worth a mind-boggling £68,600,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 – that's 68 septillion pounds.
Scientists made the blingin' discovery after monitoring sound waves to uncover the types of rocks hiding beneath our planet's surface.
In a new , the researchers estimate that the Earth's cratonic roots – the ancient sections of rock shaped like inverted mountains that lie at the centre of tectonic plates and stretch 200 miles deep – may contain up to two percent diamond.
After doing the maths, the boffs reckon the total amount of the sought-after stone buried underground equals a whopping quadrillion tons (or 1,000,000,000,000,000 in numbers) – meaning diamonds aren't as rare as we all thought.
“This shows that diamond is not perhaps this exotic mineral, but on the [geological] scale of things, it’s relatively common,” said Ulrich Faul, a research scientist in MIT’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences, and co-author of the new paper.
But don't go expecting the buried stash of diamonds to be dug up any time soon.
The ultra-deep cache is located more than 100 miles below the Earth's surface – that's further than any drilling expedition has ever reached.
Scientists used the same seismic data used to measure earthquakes to locate the diamonds.
This essentially saw them tracking sound waves to paint a picture of what the inside of our planet looks like.
They found that these sound waves speed up a lot faster than they previously thought when passing through the craton's roots.
Following a series of lab experiments where they sent sound waves through different rocks, the researchers discovered that only rock containing one to two percent diamond (among other components) could impact the velocities recorded in the roots.
The quadrillion figure is more than 1,000 times the amount previously thought to be hidden underground.
“It’s circumstantial evidence, but we’ve pieced it all together,” said Faul, adding “we went through all the different possibilities, from every angle, and this is the only one that’s left as a reasonable explanation.”
We pay for your stories! Do you have a story for The Sun Online news team? Email us at tips@the-sun.co.uk or call 0207 782 4368 . We pay for videos too. Click here to upload yours.