Today's NYT piece on Argyle Pink Diamonds

[kenny]

You don't need to be a NYT subscriber to read this story.

I think they let us subscribers share a few articles as a way to attract new subscribers.
Smart, which I'd expect from the NYT.

Enjoy.

Pink Diamonds Emerged Out of One of Earth’s Most Ancient Breakups

Australian researchers said the colorful gems of the Argyle mine, which produced more than 90 percent of the world’s pink stones, may have erupted when a supercontinent split.

www.nytimes.com

 

[Karl_K]

Interesting article,
I wonder if a study of hpht rough and treatment for naturals would reverse the theory that browns and pinks were over pressured.
I would not be surprised if the reverse was true, that pinks and browns did not have enough pressure to become colorless.

 

[Starstruck8]

Thank you!

Here is another report, in The Conversation:
https://theconversation.com/most-pi...-supercontinent-where-can-we-find-more-212019

And here is the article in Nature Communications:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-40904-8

Fascinating! But what I usually conclude from these sorts of reports is that if scientists are still writing articles about something, then their theories must still be evolving. It's wise to wait for the dust to settle...

 

[Karl_K]

Fascinating! But what I usually conclude from these sorts of reports is that if scientists are still writing articles about something, then their theories must still be evolving. It's wise to wait for the dust to settle...

There is a story to go with that thought.
In Canada where the diamond mines are now they were finding stones associated with diamonds and even diamonds at the edge of lakes.
So there were a a bunch of theories about how it got washed there with the melting snow... blah blah blah...
Until someone said hey the lakes are the pipes!
The rest is history.

 

[kenny]

...

Fascinating! But what I usually conclude from these sorts of reports is that if scientists are still writing articles about something, then their theories must still be evolving. It's wise to wait for the dust to settle...

With science, the dust never settles, and that's something that I LOVE about science.

Science welcomes challenges to its latest science.
Research never stops; whatever's considered the best science today may be updated tomorrow.
A good scientist doesn't get all butt-hurt when their accepted and peer-reviewed work gets replaced with new work that has even better proof.

Science constantly inching closer and closer to truth (with a capital T) is a good thing.
Yet increasingly, these days more and more people poopoo science because they complain, "they can't make up their minds". ...... Uh, Oh Boy!
First the CDC says this about masks, but then they say something different.
First they tell us eggs are good for you, then they tell us they're bad.
(For one thing, media wants eyeballs so research they quote is often not pure science - rather it's paid for by - oh - The Egg Counsel.
Critical thinking when reading & analyzing news would help us not fall for everything in their news feed.

Long ago folks must have thought ... the horizon looks flat to me, and no matter how far I travel,north south east or west, it always still looks flat.
So the earth must be flat.
That must have seemed reasonable at the time.

The sun orbiting around the world we knew must have also made sense - at least if you had no understanding/explanation of why most of those light dots in the night sky don't move with respect to each other ... however a few light dots DO move differently compared to the ones that stay put - rather all move together.
Eventually science proved the few light dots with movements that don't follow the background lights are planets and we are on a planet and we all orbit the sun - and those other dots are also suns or groups of suns very far away.
How upsetting this update must have been to the powers that be -and you know who/what I'm referring to.

Now we know better, because of science.

Thank God (opps, I mean Thank Science ) that with science the dust never settles.

 

[Ibrakeforpossums]

There is a story to go with that thought.
In Canada where the diamond mines are now they were finding stones associated with diamonds and even diamonds at the edge of lakes.
So there were a a bunch of theories about how it got washed there with the melting snow... blah blah blah...
Until someone said hey the lakes are the pipes!
The rest is history.

I think Eira Thomas discovered the first big one, by Yellowknife.
Matthew Hart's book, Diamond: Journey to the Heart of an Obsession is my favorite book these days.

 

[Starstruck8]

With science, the dust never settles, and that's something that I LOVE about science.

Science welcomes challenges to its latest science.
Research never stops; whatever's considered the best science today may be updated tomorrow.
A good scientist doesn't get all butt-hurt when their accepted and peer-reviewed work gets replaced with new work that has even better proof.

Science constantly inching closer and closer to truth (with a capital T) is a good thing.
Yet increasingly, these days more and more people poopoo science because they complain, "they can't make up their minds". ...... Uh, Oh Boy!
First the CDC says this about masks, but then they say something different.
First they tell us eggs are good for you, then they tell us they're bad.
(For one thing, media wants eyeballs so research they quote is often not pure science - rather it's paid for by - oh - The Egg Counsel.
Critical thinking when reading & analyzing news would help us not fall for everything in their news feed.

Long ago folks must have thought ... the horizon looks flat to me, and no matter how far I travel,north south east or west, it always still looks flat.
So the earth must be flat.
That must have seemed reasonable at the time.

The sun orbiting around the world we knew must have also made sense - at least if you had no understanding/explanation of why most of those light dots in the night sky don't move with respect to each other ... however a few light dots DO move differently compared to the ones that stay put - rather all move together.
Eventually science proved the few light dots with movements that don't follow the background lights are planets and we are on a planet and we all orbit the sun - and those other dots are also suns or groups of suns very far away.
How upsetting this update must have been to the powers that be -and you know who/what I'm referring to.

Now we know better, because of science.

Thank God (opps, I mean Thank Science ) that with science the dust never settles.

All true and important, but rather missing the point.

There's a sense in which the dust does settle, at least for some issues. That the earth is round and that the planets are balls of matter orbiting the sun is as settled as anything is ever going to be. Science has moved on to other questions: What exactly are the interiors of the planets like? What is the history of solar system? How did it form? How did the planets come to have their present arrangement?

It is important to appreciate the difference between well established (or at least generally accepted) results and current research. Generally accepted results are what you find in textbooks. Current research is what you read about in journals.

As you say, everything can be challenged. Even generally accepted 'textbook' ideas can turn out to be wrong - see Ptolemaic astronomy or Newtonian mechanics (taken as a fundamental theory rather than a useful approximation). But this doesn't happen often. There's not much laypeople can do about it, except to be aware that it's possible.

Current research is very different. It's the 'bleeding edge'. It's work in progress. It is routinely expected that it will be challenged, revised and re-evaluated. It is important for laypeople reading journal articles, or news reports based on journal articles, to appreciate this.