NOVA

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.

Major All around us, VA is-..

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,