Blue diamonds continue to bring top prices at auctions, like the 10.48 flawless deep-blue diamond that recently sold for $10.86 million and set a world record for blue diamond price per carat. The most famous blue, the Hope Diamond, draws and endless stream of viewers where it resides in the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. Blue diamonds are rare and fascinating. What makes them so rare and so blue? The answer is something much less glamorous than the blue diamonds themselves - boron. Its the stuff you find in flares and nuclear reactors. Its presence in diamonds occurs much less often.
At the Smithsonian, the Hope Diamond is frequently studied by scientists in an effort to better explain the phenomenon of blue diamonds. It is inserted into high-tech apparatuses, poked and irradiated all in the hope (pun intended) of discovering its mystery.
In 2010, it was put under the microscope and exposed to infrared light. Blue diamonds emit a phosphorescent, glow-in-the-dark red even after the light is turned off. Due to its particular boron mix, the Hope turns fiery red.
More recently, the Hope and 76 other blue diamonds were inserted into an ion mass spectrometer which shaved off millions of atoms from tiny patches of each. The goal was to discover how many of those atoms were boron. Not surprisingly, the Hope had the most by far. Yet the boron content did not entirely explain the variety or depth of their color. The color intensity only loosely correlates with their boron content. The exact nature of their phosphorescence is not fully understood.
Scientist will continue their investigations but, in the meantime, we can enjoy the blue diamonds like the Hope for their beauty alone.
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