How long diamonds form

Because of the temperature and pressure, under these conditions, carbon atoms will bond to each other in this very strong type of bonding where each carbon atom is bonded to four other carbon atoms. That's why a diamond is such a hard material because you have each carbon atom participating in four of these very strong covalent bonds that form between carbon atoms.

So as a result you get this hard material. Again where the carbon is coming from, how quickly they're growing, those are all still open questions, but obviously the conditions are such that you've got some group of carbon atoms that are in close enough proximity that they start to bond.

As other carbon atoms move into the vicinity they will attach on. That's the way any crystal grows. It's the process of atoms locking into place that produces this repeating network, this structure of carbon atoms, that eventually grows large enough that it produces crystals that we can see.

Each of these crystals, each diamond, one carat diamond, represents literally billions and billions of carbon atoms that all had to lock into place to form this very orderly crystalline structure. You mentioned that scientists don't know where the carbon comes from. What are some possible sources?

In some cases, the carbon seems to have originated within the mantle of the Earth, so carbon that was already in the Earth. In other cases, there's evidence very curiously to suggest that the carbon may have originated near the surface of the Earth. The thinking there is that this carbon could have literally been carbon that was part of carbonate sediments or animals, plants, shells, whatever, that was carried down into the upper mantle of the Earth by the plate tectonics mechanism called subduction.

We really don't know how long it takes. There have been attempts to try to date inclusions in different parts of diamonds, and those have largely been unsuccessful. It may be that diamonds form over periods as short a time as days, weeks, months to millions of years.

Typically, as with many crystals that grow on the Earth, it's not a continuous process. The diamonds may start to grow and then there may be an interruption for some reason — a change in conditions, temperature, pressure, source of carbon, whatever—and they could sit for millions, hundreds of million of years, and then start growing again.

That's part of the problem of trying to put some sort of a growth period on them; things don't always occur continuously in the Earth. We can grow diamonds in the lab and we can simulate conditions there. But there are things we have to do to grow diamonds in the laboratory that aren't obvious as to how it happens in the Earth. We'll help you get the best diamond for the money. We are a team of diamond experts who will teach you to identify scams and avoid spending money on features you can't see.

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James Allen will send you a paid shipping label to return the ring. It's probable that most diamonds formed a couple of billion years ago while younger diamonds, originating from the more recently discovered Kimberlite rock can be dated back to at least hundreds of millions of years ago. Following a similar protocol, synthetic diamonds can be created by humans through replicating the HPHT process.

This process is much faster with a typical turnaround time of a few days when high pressure and high temperature is applied to graphite. Another process that is often used is Chemical Vapour Deposition.

A process that requires a real diamond, applying more heat and less pressure. This is a job done by a depressurising chamber that zaps microwave beams to expel heat of almost 2, degrees. A process that can take as little as a night to complete.