Diamond Mines
In September 2012, Russia officially stated there are massive diamond reserves under the crater containing "trillions of carats" (hundreds of thousands of tons) and claimed there are enough diamonds in the field to supply global requirements for 3,000 years. This could alter the market for industrial diamonds, presumably by making them more plentiful and lower cost. However, most modern industrial diamonds are produced synthetically, so the deposits at Popigai may not be profitable due to the remote location and difficulty of extraction. Many of the diamonds at Popigai contain crystalline lonsdaleite, an allotrope of carbon that has a hexagonal lattice. Pure, laboratory-created lonsdaleite is 58% harder than ordinary diamonds, though it is unknown whether the natural, impure examples at Popigai show similar characteristics. The diamonds also "contain unusual abrasive features and large grain size" which could make them extremely useful for industrial and scientific applications. These types of diamonds are known as "impact diamonds" because they are thought to be produced when a meteorite strikes a graphite deposit at high velocity. They may have industrial uses but are considered unsuitable as gems.
Additionally, carbon polymorphs even harder than lonsdaleite have been discovered in the crater.
Read more about this topic: Popigai Crater
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