Everything you will ever touch is made of atoms. A knife’s edge, a mirror’s glass, a lover’s shoulder—all atoms. The source of the atoms is not a matter of scientific debate, though it sounds almost too magical to be believed: nearly everything that we are came from stars.
Of course, just because something is true does not mean it is not astonishing, improbable, or even inconceivable. A diamond is made up of just one kind of atom, many times over: carbon. Its complete chemical formula is exquisitely simple: C. Yet, as a matter of chemical fact, the same carbon atoms, differently arranged, yield not a sparkling diamond, but gray pencil lead. The diamond is in the details. As a substance, diamond is a marvel of the universe. Light travels through it at less than half the speed at which the same light passes through air. The resulting faceted refraction reveals the diamond’s signature “fire” —brilliant, fleeting colors that flash and wink from different angles. It is such an efficient conductor of heat that a handheld sliver of diamond cuts easily through a block of ice. It cannot be scratched, except by another diamond. Diamonds form when carbon atoms are subjected to tremendous heat and pressure. The impressive thing is not that they can be made underground. Underground is, after all, the stage for many astonishing phenomena,
like undersea volcanoes that expel glowing magma into the deep ocean, and car-sized milky white selenite crystals that jut out of subterranean caves. The truly remarkable feat is that, after only a few decades of research (a fraction of a blink on the geologic time scale), human beings have discovered how to recreate the natural process that forms diamonds, at will.
