The 170-carat Lulo Rose diamond could become the most expensive pink diamond ever sold at auction.
The pink rough diamond is named Lulo Rose. Photo: Fox
One of the world's largest rough pink diamonds was discovered by miners in Angola in 2022, according to IFL Science . Dubbed the "Lulo Rose," the gem weighs 170 carats and could become the most expensive diamond in history. Its massive weight is a factor, but the rare pink color also makes the Lulo Rose valuable.
Colored diamonds are extremely rare, accounting for just 0.01% (1 in 10,000) of all diamonds mined on the planet. Pinks are as rare as blues, greens, purples, oranges, and reds, while yellows and browns are slightly more common. While the rarity of colored diamonds drives up the price of the gems, the beautiful colors are a result of imperfections. The reason people mine more clear diamonds is because pure diamonds are more common.
Researchers don’t know the exact mechanism behind pink diamonds, but they think it’s the result of deformation. It’s one of three ways diamonds can become flawed (the other two are inclusions and damage). Deformation occurs when the diamond’s lattice structure is twisted and bent, changing the way light reflects off the diamond, making it appear less white.
The amount of distortion needs to be just right for the stone to be pink, because too much and it will turn brown. The color of a diamond is always a precise reflection of the conditions under which it was formed. That’s why flawed diamonds are never the same. So pink diamonds are not all the same shade.
About 80 to 90 percent of all pink diamonds found are mined in the same area because they originated in areas with similar geological histories. The now-closed Argyle mine in Western Australia was the site of a continental collision some 1.8 billion years ago. While the impact created a lot of pressure, its proximity to the base of the lithosphere provided plenty of heat, creating enough deformation to produce a wide range of colored diamonds, from pale pink to red, brown, orange, and purple. There are many pink diamonds, but none as large as the Lulo Rose.
Before the discovery of the Lulo Rose, the largest and most expensive pink diamond was the Pink Star, which sold in Hong Kong for $71.2 million in 2017. The stone weighed 132.5 carats but was cut to 59.6 carats. As a result, many predicted that the 170-carat Lulo Rose could dethrone the Pink Star as the most expensive diamond ever sold at auction.
An Khang (According to IFL Science )
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