For those of you currently shopping for an engagement ring, here's some good news: There are a lot more diamonds hiding in the ground than we thought.
By measuring seismic waves rippling through Earth, scientists have discovered a quadrillion tons of diamonds about a hundred miles below the planet's surface. That's as much as a thousand times more than previous estimates, National Geographic reported.
A quadrillion — which is about the number of ants that are alive worldwide, to give you some perspective — tons is still only a small percentage, as it turns out. The newly discovered diamonds amount to only about 2 percent of the layer of Earth where they were found. "It was unexpected," said Joshua Garber, the author of the study, "but not unprecedented."
The study, published in the journal Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems, isn't perfectly conclusive; there's a possibility that the seismic waves measured could be caused by other compounds. But it presents "an exciting and elegant result," said Maureen Long, a seismologist at Yale University.
The rarity of diamonds has always been a little exaggerated by jewelry markets — and now, it's even more so. But it might be too much to hope that this new discovery will make getting that bling any cheaper. Read more about this study at National Geographic.