by Kasey Cunningham

The Hope Diamond is famous for its 45.52 carat weight, its blue color and its mysterious curse. Now, scientists believe the world’s most famous diamond may hold the key to answering questions about Earth’s history from billions of years ago.

Scientists at the Smithsonian Institution report that the Hope Diamond contains a high amount of boron. In order to understand the composition of blue diamonds, they tested the amount of boron in the Hope diamond and an additional 77 blue diamonds. The “hope” was to see if there was a correlation between boron levels and the intensity of blue color that appears in a blue diamond.

The testing consisted of placing all 78 diamonds into an apparatus that fired gallium ions, peeling off atoms to sort by weight to reveal how many atoms were boron.

DTM’s former postdoctoral fellow Eloise Galliou (now a curator of the gem and mineral collection at the Natural Museum of History in Los Angeles, CA) led this research and concluded there was no correlation between the two.

“We tried to plot the intensity of the color versus the boron concentration. Basically, it gave no correlation between the two.”

The next step for scientists is to specify how many of each of the two types of boron are present in blue diamonds. The heavier type of boron can be found in rocks the ocean floor.

In fact, DTM staff scientist Steve Shirey believes that the boron came from an ocean plate that was pushed downward into the Earth to where diamonds form.

More research on the boron levels in the Hope Diamond will potentially lead to further explanations of the origin of the element, and ultimately give insight into the compositional history of Earth.

For more information: Check out the New York Times