Russia boasts of huge diamond field

Russian scientists said a large deposit of industrial diamonds found during Soviet times in a huge meteorite crater in Siberia should be dug up now because it would benefit industries, AP reported. The scientists said the deposit wouldn't cause turmoil in the global diamond market because its diamonds are only good for technological purposes, not for jewelry. The Siberian branch of Russian Academy of Sciences said over the weekend that the Popigai crater contains "many trillions of carats" of so-called "impact diamonds." Nikolai Pokhilenko, head of the Geological and Mineralogical Institute in Novosibirsk, told the RIA Novosti news agency Monday that the diamonds found in Popigai include other molecular forms of carbon. He said they could be twice as hard as conventional diamonds and therefore have superlative industrial qualities.