Original subtitles

Gemstones, precious metals,

and power...

Building blocks of civilization

But how are they created?

Our Earth is a master chef

She knows how to cook

These gems are really forged

in unimaginable conditions deep inside the planet

How did metal shape our past?

I love steel

It's actually the backbone of our society

And how will these gifts be used to build the tools of tomorrow?

Such a simple element has enabled all of the technology

that surrounds us today

It is amazing that this came

from the sand that exists in our deserts

We're going to launch this incredible telescope,

and we're going to send it a million miles into space

from the earth

to actually unlock the secrets of the universe

And it will all rely on two ounces of gold

In this episode, we go behind the sparkle of gemstones

When you look into a beautiful gemstone,

you're seeing something quite miraculous

What are the secrets to their beauty?

This is no magic trick

This is just chemistry

And what scientific mysteries do they reveal?

These are the biggest questions you can answer about geology

It's amazing the role diamonds have played

in understanding Earth as a whole

"Treasures of the Earth," right now on NOVA.

All around us, we see Earth's abundance:

spectacular mountains, Caribbean blue seas,

and plentiful crops

But Earth's bounty is not just skin deep

Some of our most important resources are forged

even deeper inside our planet

These are the minerals that help make our modern world

and inspire us with their beauty:

gemstones like diamond, ruby, and emerald

We guard these treasures

and cherish them as symbols of our love

But they also hold secrets

about the formation of Earth itself

Just off Central Park,

along Manhattan's famous 5th Avenue,

America's premier jeweler, Tiffany,

has been selling these treasures

to some of the world's richest people,

from the Gilded Age to the heydays of Hollywood

The store even played a starring role in this famous 1961 movie,

Breakfast at Tiffany's.

Tiffany's is the quintessential jeweler for the world

Melvyn Kirtley,

Tiffany's chief gemologist, says that last year,

Tiffany sold more than $4 billion worth of jewelry

Our goal is to really search for the ultimate...

Those unique, rare specimens

When you look into a beautiful gemstone,

you're seeing something quite miraculous

You know, it's arresting

Here, we've got really

the most beautiful emerald necklace

with this magnificent 45-carat emerald

The color is just verdant green

It's just got this incredible saturation to it

This is really truly spectacular

At Tiffany's workshop,

top quality gems are crafted into prized jewelry

One piece can take months to create

That's when you get the beauty from the stone

That's when you get the life, the brilliance

That's the "wow" effect

But the story of how these gems were created

goes back billions of years

forged in some of the most tortuous conditions

found anywhere on Earth

How can such violence and intensity

create such delicate beauty?

Clues about the massive force required

lie just off the coast of China

Here, geologist Lung Chan

searches for evidence in the ancient rocks

It seems like the rocks are talking to me,

and there is always a story to tell

Hiding behind the tranquility

and the peacefulness of the rocks

is a story of violence and tremendous complexities

It doesn't take long for Chan

to find a layer of rock folded nearly in half

by the forces that create earthquakes

This rock layer used to be flat-lying and continuous

Now it's completely folded, forming a V-shape

The same kind of violent forces gave Earth gemstones

Every gemstone is forged by a unique geologic recipe

of chemistry, heat, and intense pressure

Our Earth is a master chef

Setting the temperature and pressure just right,

using the right ingredients,

she knows how to cook various kinds of gemstones

The most treasured of all gems

are created hundreds of miles below the earth's surface

It is here

where extremely high pressures and hot temperatures

turn one of Earth's most basic elements

into exquisite hard crystals: diamonds

So what are diamonds made of?

To discover the ingredients

requires doing something horrifying for any gem lover:

torching a perfectly good diamond,

which is exactly what chemist Andrea Sella will do

We often hear that

diamonds are forever

But when we put this guy into a really hot flame

and drop him into liquid oxygen, it begins to sparkle

And look... The diamond is burning away

As it burns, it gets smaller and smaller and smaller

Eventually, it disappears

It's gone

We can burn it away to nothing except carbon dioxide

And that's because diamonds

are made of nothing more than carbon

So we've taken

the hardest natural material and we've made it disappear,

and yet, this is no magic trick

This is just chemistry

Carbon is one of Earth's most common elements...

Nature's building blocks

It is essential to all living things...

Plants, animals, even our bodies...

And crucial to man-made structures

throughout our modern world

Carbon's versatility can be seen in two things,

both pure carbon but completely different:

diamonds and graphite, or ordinary pencil lead

When you look at these two,

the diamond and the tip of the pencil,

it seems almost insane to imagine that they're made

of the same substance, the same element carbon

And yet what it comes down to

is the way in which those carbons are linked together

The way in which atoms link together

is the essence of chemistry

In diamonds, one carbon atom bonds with four others

This is repeated to create

a dense, cage-like crystal structure

But in pencil lead, carbon bonds with only three others,

forming flat sheets that stack like a deck of cards

The sheets lie on top of each other

but are not fully bonded

They can slide one past the other,

and when we write with a pencil, what we're doing is

we're peeling those sheets off one or two at a time,

leaving a little gray trail, a little bit like a snail

So why do carbon atoms sometimes make three bonds,

like in pencil lead, and at other times four?

This is just an extraordinary thing

How can one of the softest materials,

one of the hardest materials, both be formed of pure carbon?

Bob Hazen of the Deep Carbon Observatory

says the difference between pencil lead and diamond

can be explained by the environment

where the bonds form

If you have fairly low pressure, the atoms can spread out,

they don't feel compressed or strained,

and so you have a much more relaxed crystal structure

Graphite, or pencil lead,

forms in low pressure, like near Earth's surface

But diamonds only form

hundreds of miles deep inside our planet,

where the temperatures and pressures are extreme

As soon as you get pressure, the atoms are forced together

They have to be more and more efficiently packed together

And so the thing about diamond is

carbon atoms are incredibly efficiently packaged together

Those efficient bonds

are the key to making these prized treasures

Recently, a remarkable diamond,

the second largest gem-quality stone ever discovered,

was found in Botswana,

weighing in at an incredible 1,109 carats

It's truly historical

This could be, you know, the most incredible piece

of a diamond ever cut

The estimated value of the diamond is $70 million

That's a whole lot of money for a rock

that is nothing more than efficiently organized carbon

The secret of that efficient organization of atoms

lies deep within the architecture

of the carbon atom itself

At the atom's center is a nucleus

with six protons and neutrons

Surrounding the nucleus

are an equal number of orbiting electrons,

arranged in what are called shells

The innermost shell can hold only two electrons

The second shell can hold eight

But carbon's six electrons

only fill up half of that outer shell,

leaving the atom unstable

Every atom wants to find

a comfortable electron arrangement...

A filled shell

Now, carbon is in a funny position

It's got six electrons,

so it's four away from two, it's four away from ten...

It's in the middle

So carbon is never quite that happy

It's always kind of striving

to find a different configuration

The configuration when carbon is most happy

is when its electron shells are filled,

like in this diamond crystal

But there are many combinations that can fill carbon's shells,

and that's why it's such an important element

in our natural world

It even plays a starring role at this glamorous Tiffany gala

The movie stars' hair is made of protein,

which is packed with carbon

Their flawless skin and high cheekbones

have a lot of carbon, too

And of course under the extreme conditions deep inside Earth,

carbon atoms bond into the exquisitely hard,

exquisitely clear,

and exquisitely expensive diamond

But it took a lot more than beauty

for these diamonds to get to the red carpet

Diamonds are forced to Earth's surface

in a very special kind of volcanic eruption

The rock inside

traveled hundreds of miles through Earth's mantle

at up to 30 miles an hour

The diamond just comes along for the ride

Raw diamond crystals can be seen still embedded in this rock,

known as kimberlite

The diamond was just an accidental passenger

en route to the surface of the earth

These eruptions leave behind

very deep funnels of kimberlite and diamond,

which is why mining diamonds

takes a severe toll on the landscape,

and, at times, an even bigger toll on humans

In places like Sierra Leone, Africa,

uncontrolled mining has led to horrific conditions

for the miners

The diamonds they find

can head straight for a black market

that have funded warlords and weapons

in brutal civil wars

These are the so-called blood diamonds

Diamonds that are legally exported

are subject to strict controls

and sent to just a handful of diamond centers worldwide

90% of America's diamonds pass through one city:

New York, famous for its hustle-bustle and bling

This is 47th Street, the Diamond District,

where trader Ronnie Vanderlinden

is one of its many unofficial mayors

Welcome to 47th Street... the land of everything

But what this street is really known for,

what it's about, is its magnificent diamonds

I like the shizzle

I like it all

Today, he has a little business with Gregory Jezarian

Gregory!

Hey Ronnie, how are you? How are you, buddy?

Do you have those stones? I do

Negotiating the sale

of a quarter-of-a-million dollar square-shaped diamond

I think this might be the winner

A key step to make a diamond worth that kind of money

is the cut, which reveals

the sparkling beauty of the stone

Michael Kaufman is a master diamond cutter

I've been in the business since 1966

I started off as an apprentice diamond cutter

I was a baby, literally a baby

Today, he's repairing a chipped diamond

While diamonds are the hardest material on Earth,

they aren't very tough,

which means if you strike it at the just the right angle

between the planes of carbon atoms, it will break

This line of weakness is called the cleavage grain

I'm going to look for the grain of the stone

People don't realize that diamond has grain

just like wood has grain

If you have this entire building

and put it on top of this diamond in the street,

it will make a hole in the street

But yet if you hit it on the cleaving grain,

it will take off a small piece... Sometimes not so small

That grain is also key

to transforming the rough rock into a shimmering faceted gem

When the job is done

and all the facets are where they should be

and I see the brilliance, I see that stone talk to me

It says, "Michael, you did a good job"

Revealing a diamond's beauty

comes down to the careful arrangement of these facets

Diamonds need to be cut

in very, very specific parameters

to get it to maximize light return

This is the round brilliant cut,

one of the most popular shapes in the world

When a diamond is proportioned in a perfect way,

it will act as a hall of mirrors

If it's not, then the light will push out of the back

and you'll basically lose light

In 1919, a Belgian mathematician named Marcel Tolkowsky

used principles of optical physics and math

to determine the optimum number and angle of facets

to create a diamond that perfectly caught the light

When he came along,

it was more putting a science to the actual proportions

and understanding that they matter

Imagine this is an uncut crystal with a smooth surface on it,

and now we're going to shine green light onto it

Debbie Berebichez, a physicist,

explains how light can be captured in a crystal

by using a green laser so our camera can see it

So we see that spot on the wall

because most of the light is getting transmitted

to the other side

Now, if instead we use a faceted crystal,

we can see how most of the light is getting trapped

and bouncing around inside the crystal,

and a lot of it is coming back reflected into our eyes,

very much like a hall of mirrors

Tolkowsky found that a diamond

cut with nearly 60 carefully angled facets

created an exquisite geometry

that reflected light around the stone many times,

then bounced it out through the top

and into our eyes

We call this phenomenon "brilliance"

When white light enters a diamond

at just the right angle, something extraordinary happens:

these facets,

along with how the diamond affects wavelengths of light,

disperse it into a rainbow of colors

like light through a prism

This creates the flashes of color called fire

Because of diamond's hardness,

the polishing of the facets create such incredible mirrors

that the diamond bounces the light back to the eye

So you're really getting a combination of light

to give this beautiful dispersion and sparkle

It turns out that a diamond's brilliant sparkle

comes down to optical physics... Something truly to sing about

♪ But square cut or pear shape ♪

♪ These rocks don't lose their shape ♪

♪ Diamonds are a girl's best friend ♪

As Marilyn Monroe did in this 1953 classic

♪ Tiffany's ♪

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.

♪ Cartier ♪

In Washington D C, there's a very special diamond

that Marilyn Monroe would surely have loved to get her hands on

6:00 a m

Inside the Smithsonian's Museum of Natural History,

the gem gallery is on lockdown

Curator of Gems Jeffery Post

is removing the museum's most infamous

and most visited exhibit from its bulletproof case

What I'm holding right now

is probably the world's most famous diamond

This is the Hope Diamond

It is a large blue diamond, 45-and-a-half carats,

the largest, finest blue diamond that we know of

anywhere in the world

Post says it is impossible to estimate the diamond's value

in part because of its long history of intrigue

It was bought in the 17th century

by Jean Baptiste Tavernier

and sold to King Louis XIV of France

It is believed that during the French Revolution,

the diamond was smuggled to London, re-cut,

then purchased by the Hope family,

where it got it name

But only after it was sold

to the American socialite Evelyn Walsh McLean,

whose family was soon struck by a series of tragedies,

did the diamond earn its famed reputation of being cursed

So finally, this legendary and mysterious diamond

was purchased by the jeweler Harry Winston

and given to the Smithsonian Institution

There is, of course, no scientific way

to shed light on the diamond's alleged curse,

but there is definitely science behind its magical blue color

And today, Jeffery Post wants to reveal the secret

The precious diamond is put into a mass spectrometer,

where a laser is used to break free individual atoms

that then travel through the machine

A clear diamond is pure carbon,

so all the atoms would travel at the same speed

But today, the machine detects a few atoms flying faster

This means there is an impurity in the diamond

Boron, yeah, right here

Traces of a lighter element called boron

On average, our measurements revealed the Hope Diamond

has about a half of a part per million of boron

It is the tiny little bit

that is just enough to make a colorless diamond

the deep, dark blue color that we know as the Hope Diamond

But boron isn't blue,

so why does this impurity change the color?

It results from how different atoms handle light

The carbon atoms in a diamond

are bound together by their electrons,

but these electrons can also interact with light

when it shines into the gem

In clear diamond crystals,

since all the electrons are bound together,

all the colors in white light pass through

In the Hope Diamond,

an atom of boron replaces a carbon atom,

but boron can only make three bonds, not four

That changes the electronic structure of the diamond

When white light hits this atom,

it absorbs some of the wavelengths of red light

But the blue light passes right through,

making the Hope Diamond appear its unique color of blue

The Hope Diamond is one of the most unique objects

in the world

Look at how many other blue diamonds

comparable to the Hope Diamond have been found,

and the answer is zero

There may not be another diamond quite like the Hope,

but gems can come in a surprising array of colors

We all know emeralds are green, rubies red, and sapphires blue

Well, frankly, that's just plain wrong

Is this a sapphire?

This is blue

It looks like a sapphire, it's nice and big,

but it's not sapphire

You can't go by color

In fact, none of these green stones are emeralds

Yet surprisingly, all of these are what we call sapphires

Color is something that Mike Scott is passionate about

and wants to understand

in everything from brilliant gemstones

to the koi fish he keeps in his backyard

Color brings out all kinds of emotion,

just like smells do

I enjoy the complexity

or understanding how things works

To me, color sets what mood I'm in

Scott has amassed what is considered

one the world's most important collections of gems

outside of royal family

Mike Scott is one of the world's great connoisseurs of gems

He goes out of his way

to find the most beautiful colored stones,

and each of those colored stones is telling us a story

Part of my collection is to just show

there's more to the world than sapphire, ruby, and emerald

Scott may not have a diamond quite like the Hope,

but he's collected diamonds in almost every known color,

including yellow, green, pink, and even the rarest:

red

Scott's rainbow collection was made possible

by Apple Computers

He made his fortune as the first CEO,

taking it from Steve Jobs' garage

to going public on Wall Street

I hand-built the first ten Apple IIs

But Scott says his first task at Apple

came not from Steve Jobs,

but the other employees at the time

My first job

as president at Apple

was to tell Steve Jobs he had to take a bath

It seems that Steve's special diet was creating body odor

He negotiates everything,

so he agreed to take a bath more often

and I had to agree to read his diet book,

hopefully that it would cause me to lose some weight,

which it didn't

Scott didn't plan on investing his fortune in gemstones,

but he got hooked

the first time he tried to buy himself an expensive one

because it turned out to be a fake

That got me further interested in

how do you know the difference

since you can't just tell by color

and by looking at the stone

- A - physicist by training,

Scott wants to better understand the nature of minerals...

Materials that are crystalline in structure

and include gemstones

Scott is so devoted to this pursuit

that he has removed all the traditional furniture

from his Silicon Valley living room

and turned it into a world-class gem and mineral lab

Out with the couch, in with the Raman spectrometer

Mike Scott has put

part of his fortune

into building the world's largest database of minerals:

their structures, their properties,

their optical characteristics

So we understand this rich realm,

the kingdom of minerals, in much more complexity

and completeness than we ever have before

Today, Scott is analyzing a sapphire: a 30 carat one

This one's from Sri Lanka

Like the Hope Diamond, it's blue,

but how it got its color

is a completely different geologic story

Sapphires are actually more rare than diamonds

Making one requires the force of moving mountains, literally

Sapphires are formed in Earth's crust...

Not the deeper mantle where diamonds form...

During the geologic process of plate tectonics

All the continents on Earth ride on giant tectonic plates

pushed and pulled by heat deep within the earth

For likely billions of years,

the continents have moved around,

crashing over and under each other

Causing earthquakes and pushing up huge mountains

Beneath Earth's surface,

heat and pressure created from the massive friction

liquefy rock that reforms into new minerals,

sometimes sapphires

Many of the best sapphires

come from the island nation of Sri Lanka,

off the coast of India, which was caught in the middle

of colliding plates 600 million years ago

Gemologist Andy Lucas

is on the hunt for these precious stones,

a task that requires going down in a traditional pit mine

Hi

Can I take a look?

Thank you, sir

Entering the mine, Lucas finds himself in a wet,

potentially dangerous environment

Now, you can see the wooden braces,

you can see the struts supporting them

Now, they have a problem here with groundwater,

so they can't go too deep,

and they have to be careful for the erosion

so they don't have a tunnel cave-in

What they are mining is a loose gravel called illam

And they'll take this metal bar, this pointed metal bar

and they'll dig it into the illam

Then they put it in bags

The bags are hoisted up on ropes

Andy's route back up the slippery bamboo scaffold

is a bit tougher

Once on the surface again, Andy examines the gravel illam

It's going to look like a lot of mud,

but also with some pebbles in there

Now, I'm not seeing any gemstones yet,

but after washing bag after bag after bag of this muddy gravel,

then they might find something,

maybe something that could change their lives

The illam is sediment comprised of rocks and dirt

that washed here from upstream

Nature kind of did a bit of the work

and concentrated them in an area

If a miner is lucky enough

to find a gemstone in this loose illam,

it is sent to the city to be polished into true treasures

Armil Sammoon and his family

specialize in polishing and cutting sapphires

My family has been in the business for five generations

It comes into your blood and then it stays there

It is the beauty of the stone

It's just beautiful

You can just sit for hours just drooling over it

Today, they are at work

trying to figure out how to cut a 90-carat rough sapphire

A finished gem jumps in value

when it hits a larger threshold like ten, 20, or 50 carats

It's almost a perfect crystal

Sammoon's goal is to cut this down

to a well faceted 50-carat gem,

but that will take careful planning

We can sit on it for two weeks, ten days,

just, you know, fool around with it,

think what's best

Come back, take a look,

have a cup of tea,

and then think about it

Make the wrong decision

and it could be a costly mistake

One of the world's most celebrated gems

is the 12-carat sapphire from Sri Lanka

that was worn as an engagement ring by Lady Diana

Today, the same ring is worn by the new duchess of Cambridge

This brilliant blue sapphire is estimated to be worth $400,000

But in the bustling Sri Lankan market,

the sapphires that Lucas discovers

are not what you might expect

This stone has

very little color in it...

Not quite colorless, but almost

Believe it or not, this is a sapphire

Sapphires are a variety of the mineral corundum,

which in its pure state is colorless

Corundum crystals are made up of aluminum and oxygen atoms

It is the second hardest natural gemstone after diamond

But colorless corundum is not a treasure;

its value comes from its impurity

What gives corundum its color is what we call trace elements

In the case of blue sapphire, it's iron and titanium

Different impurities absorb and reflect

different colors of light, similar to the Hope Diamond

Take a look at the color

Would you believe me if I told you

this was a sapphire?

This stone is purple and it's still a sapphire

Sapphires come in yellow, pink, and of course blue,

but one color of sapphire has a name all its own:

ruby

I think most people don't realize

ruby and sapphire, they're related

They're both from the mineral corundum

They're varieties

It's just the color distinction

that we give these gems their famous names

Rubies' color comes from the element chromium

Their rarity makes them one of the most valuable gems

Sapphires and rubies show how even Earth's imperfect recipes

can lead to some of its most beautiful creations

Cooked by the heat and pressure of colliding tectonic plates,

impurities can turn a simple dull rock

into a rainbow of rare and precious gemstones

But not all gems are found washed loose

Emeralds are some of the rarest gems

But hunting for them requires patience and explosive power

Jamie Hill and Ed Speer of North Carolina

have been mining emeralds for more than 30 years

Almost ten percent

of all of the emeralds found on this property

are greater than 100 carats

That means they're that big or bigger

These are some of the biggest, best emeralds in the world

Emeralds are formed by the hot, mineral-rich fluids

generated when land masses collide,

as they did about 380 million years ago

here in what is now North Carolina

The challenge for Jamie and Ed

is that these emeralds can be anywhere here,

still encased in the rock where they formed

That's a nice specimen

That's where the firepower comes in

We've got over 3,500 pounds of high explosives

It's gonna be over 10,000 tons of rock

This is gonna be a big one, I mean, a real big one

Blowing up a lot of earth

is all in a day's work for Ed and Jamie

But today, like most, they come up short

The explosion didn't reveal any obvious new emeralds

We've got several days of hard work here

But I'm very excited

because emeralds could be anywhere at any moment

Oh!

There's the big one

Remember that one?

Remember that one?

It's that big one you found at the end of the day

You were about to go home

I wanted to go home, I was tired

I'll never forget that

That emerald weighs over 1,450 carats

Making it one of the ten largest emeralds ever found

in North America

And this is only one of the treasures

Jamie and Ed have found

To date, they have uncovered

$9 million worth of emeralds

and have no plans to stop looking

But if two men at one location can uncover that many,

it begs the question:

are precious gems like diamonds and emeralds really that rare?

It's so funny to think

about the marketing of diamonds,

making them sound incredibly rare and incredibly valuable

And, of course,

a big, perfect diamond is a rare object

But the typical diamond, half a carat, one carat diamond,

they're available by the billions,

and they have to be because otherwise,

you wouldn't have a jewelry market

Robert Hazen believes that the value of gemstones

is largely a creation by the jewelry industry,

not nature

But in some cases,

the value comes from traditions thousands of years old

Nowhere is that more evident than in modern Beijing

Here, despite the onslaught of rising wealth

and luxury goods,

there is one ancient treasure that rises above all others:

jade

In China, jade can be even more valuable than diamonds

This jade necklace is called "water's love"

It is made up of the highest-quality stones,

perfect for attending galas

It will elevate the party-going lady's status instantly

Whoever wears "water's love,"

she will be the queen of the party

Lisa Dong sells jade pieces that can cost upwards of $20 million

Even traditional jade bracelets,

which have been worn by women here for thousands of years,

can easily cost tens of thousands

When you click two jade pieces together,

the clicking sound represents a character trait...

A refusal to be contaminated by evil influences

Jade bracelets are thought to bring luck and happiness

with no end or beginning, just like their shape

When a Chinese woman marries, diamonds are not important

What is important is to have a jade bracelet and ring

They embody the ideas of Confucius:

benevolence, righteousness, courtesy, wisdom, and trust

How can one stone mean so much to so many?

There's no better place to find an answer

than in the heart of Imperial China:

The Forbidden City

Lin Xu is a specialist in ancient jade

Westerns may believe jade

is a normal stone, but in the eyes of us Chinese,

jade is not only a beautiful stone

We have such a long history of jade objects in China

From its initial use of connecting us to the gods,

we add more functions to it throughout the years

And now, the culture of jade

coincides with Chinese culture and history

Over China's very long history,

jade became increasingly connected

with the imperial ruler

Jade's association

with the emperor developed in stages

Owning jade was forbidden to common people

They could lose their heads if they were caught using jade

There were strict rules

Some of the most important pieces of jade

were the emperor's seals, called xi

All of the 25 xi

were equally important, tightly connected

to the emperor's rule and law-making

This is a green jade xi for signing important documents

that make announcement to the entire nation

Whoever owned the xi was to own the entire country

Ever since then, every dynasty carried on the tradition

Dynasties fought over the control of the xi

The English word for jade describes what are actually

two completely different minerals: jadeite and nephrite

In my left hand

is a mineral called jadeite

In my right hand is a greenish mineral called nephrite

Both are, generally speaking, referred to as jade,

but chemically, these are two very different minerals

One way you can tell between a jadeite and a nephrite

is to rub one against the other,

and you can see the jadeite, being slightly harder,

can scratch the nephrite

Nephrite has the much longer history in Chinese culture

One massive piece of nephrite jade

that was prized above all others by the emperor

still sits in the Forbidden City

Altogether, this sculpture took ten years to complete

It is also the largest jade sculpture in China

That tradition of intricate carving

still continues in the town of Yangzhou,

north of Shanghai

Jade is not chipped away like marble

Historically, pedal-powered machines

and a hard abrasive were used

to slowly grind and shape the stone

Even today, with the help of modern tools,

jade requires patience to slowly reveal the beauty of the stone

Master carver Yijin Gao says

it is unlike diamond, which is cleaved

You can't cut jade

The first step is to remove the unnecessary parts

The second step is grinding slowly

for the piece to take shape

The earliest uses of jade were as primitive tools

because the toughness and durability of the stone

allowed it to be shaped into useful forms

Richard Vinci is a materials scientist at Lehigh University

Mostly, we associate

toughness or being damage-tolerant with metals

With a lot of minerals,

as soon as they start to crack, they just come apart

Jade is a little bit different,

and it comes down to the internal structure...

Not down at the atomic scale, but at the micrometer scale

That's looking more promising

Maybe if we were to come into this area over here?

This piece of jade

has all of these little crystal fibers

that are long and skinny,

they look almost like little noodles of spaghetti,

and they're all packed together tightly

to make the solid crystal

In this area, the fibers are all running this way,

but in this area, it looks like they're running cross this way

Down here, they're running at sort of a diagonal

So as you try to crack it,

the crack may go through one bundle following the fibers,

but as soon as it hits the next bundle

where the fibers are oriented in a different direction,

it has a very difficult time,

and that gives it a fair degree of toughness

That toughness has led to another belief

widespread in China:

that jade protects the person who wears it...

One reason so many people buy jade jewelry

Chinese people normally believe jade carries a blessing

We've all heard many stories that a piece of jade shatters

in order to protect his master

I think it's often the case

that people associate physical characteristics

with more moral or mystical characteristics

So the characteristics that we associate with that material

are coming from its individual atoms

and their electron structure

and how those atoms are arranged

We really can't appreciate that

at the level at which we're using it,

but we certainly appreciate the properties

that result from it

There is another gem

with unusual microscopic properties

that some call the Queen,

and it is mostly found Down Under

Australia has 95% of the world's precious opal

Black opal is the most rare

and famously comes from one town:

Lightning Ridge

Anthony Melonas is a fourth-generation miner

It's in my blood

I look at diamonds and emeralds

and rubies and sapphires

Well, opal's the queen

Opal is the queen of all the gems

Melonas says the only way to find an opal

is to careful dig away at the Outback's clay walls

The thing about opal:

just when you think you know what you're doing,

it will surprise you

It can form anywhere

And what you don't want is this piece of machinery

going right through a big opal

Fortunately, in the white rock,

the colors of opal make it relatively easy to spot

These vivid colors are what gives the stone its value

Opal can come in many colors,

including deep blue-greens, intense purple, or fiery red

And it has a sparkle all its own,

again a result of its microscopic structure

I love opals

Not only are they very flashy, but they're also very different

from most of the other gemstones

Instead of irregular little crystals,

they are these perfect little spheres

An opal is made up of tiny spheres of silica,

a mixture of silicon and oxygen

found in sand and even ordinary window glass

The spheres are so small that when packed together,

they can scatter wavelengths of light,

creating flashes of different colors

And so depending on the size of the spheres,

you will get different colors appearing

Certain opals will flash mostly green or mostly red

or maybe a mixture of these colors

Opal is not a crystal like most other gems;

it is a collection of billions of glassy spheres

packed together and surrounded by a small amount of water

Just how opals form is not completely understood

One interpretation is that under rare conditions,

water percolated through the ground

and dissolved silica from rock

That viscous mineral mix filled in cracks in the Earth

and slowly solidified, like Jell-O in a mold

Opal can form in any gap

or even fill in fossils left by ancient life

These rare fossils are a colorful record

of a prehistoric world

preserved in part by a unique geology

in Australia, where very little happened,

all evidence of an exquisite connection

between geology, life, and precious gems

The beauty of every gem

comes from a unique recipe inside Earth

But can they tell us something more?

Are there clues held by these gems

that can solve some of the most enduring mysteries

in the field of geology?

One of those mysteries

is when the important process of plate tectonics began

Giant tectonic plates pushed and pulled

by the need to release heat deep within Earth

have shaped the map of the continents

into what we know today

and made Earth more geologically active

than all other known planets

But when did this critical process begin?

When plate tectonics begins

is a huge question

Some people think it is more than four billion years ago

Some people think it didn't really get started

until less than a billion years

That's a huge discrepancy

So any insight we have on how plate tectonics began

is incredibly valuable

to understanding our dynamic planet

Steven Shirey at the Carnegie Institution for Science

thinks these diamonds may hold the answer, literally

So we're looking at three rough diamonds

Rough diamonds means uncut

Shirey, a geochemist,

is investigating what others consider bad diamonds:

ones with flaws... Tiny bits of earth

trapped inside, called inclusions

Here's one, here's another one

These black specs would make this diamond

not good for the jewelry market,

so Tiffany's would not this particular specimen

Tiffany's may not want them,

but for Shirey, these diamonds are, in effect,

an ancient safety deposit box

preserving the chemistry of early Earth

Diamonds are the best container you could have for anything

When they enclose a mineral,

they become the best time capsules we have

The first step is getting to the flaw

After all, this container is made

of the hardest material on Earth

What we have here is a diamond-cutting laser

It's going to cut from top to bottom,

and that part of the diamond will be actually vaporized

All right, Joe, let's go ahead and cut this baby, all right?

Here we go, ready?

When I see a diamond, like anybody, I love its beauty

But I really love a diamond that has a lot of flaws

Then the diamonds are polished

to clearly reveal the inclusions

Then we can get a really good look at the inclusions,

and you can see one, two, three, four

By breaking through the diamond

and analyzing the chemistry of the minerals,

Shirey has found something startling:

minerals billions of years old

that could only have formed on the surface

But given that diamonds form deep within the Earth,

how did that happen?

Shirey believes that the motion of plate tectonics

carried the minerals deep into Earth,

where the material was encapsulated by a diamond

So that's a dead ringer for the idea that

they're from the surface of the Earth

But Shirey has never found surface minerals

in a diamond older than 3 2 billion years

And that suggests that plate tectonics or a related process

could have begun at about that time

We can take very tiny grains

and scale up to very large questions

And these are the biggest questions you can answer

about geology on the earth, and we're doing it

with almost the smallest specimens that humans can study

You know, it's amazing

the role that diamonds have played

in understanding Earth as a whole

Diamonds give us hints about how Earth works

and how it was made

The journey of gemstones both flawed and flawless

reveal forces of Earth's unimaginable power

as well as the heights of artistic

and scientific endeavor

Around the world, that process continues today

as scientists are finding new uses

for these ancient treasures:

lasers that employ the clear optics of rubies,

and diamond's thermal conductivity

used in the next generation of quantum computing

So whether under museum guard, for sale at Tiffany,

or in laboratories around the world,

these treasures prove that their value,

both aesthetic and scientific, can indeed last forever