A black diamond weighing a staggering 555.55 carats is going up for auction at Sotheby's and living up to its name 'The Enigma'.
Also known as a carbonado diamond, is possible the black diamond came from outer space.
Geologist Dr. Aaron Celestian, the curator of mineral sciences at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles, told Reuters on Wednesday, "They are shrouded in mystery as the origin or formation because there's not that many of them found on Earth and this is a particularly great example, a beautiful example of one of these types of diamonds."
He added, "We think that most carbonados are about 2.6 to 3.2 billion years old. The Earth is only 4.65 billion years old so this is dating back closer to major Earth events that were taking place back then like plate tectonics and oxygenation of the Earth's atmosphere."
There are only two places in the world that carbonados of this structure have been found: Brazil and Central African Republic.
It's believed the diamond was found in a mine in one of these countries. The current owner, who is selling the gem at auction, has had 'The Enigma' in their possession for two decades, but little is known about its history before that.
It has not been exhibited before and i's expected to sell for between $4 million and $7 million. However, for someone like Dr. Celestian, the gem is priceless.
"I would love to get my hands on this diamond," he admitted.
Scientists have been theorizing about the origins of the carbonado diamonds. However, because not enough is known about processes deep within the Earth as well as nebula formations in space, they are at loggerheads.
Celestian said, "We think that they could have formed super deep within the Earth's interior, far deeper than what we know of already diamonds. There's hypotheses that suggest that they formed at impact sites, where a large asteroid hit Earth causing carbon on the surface of the Earth to grow into these carbonados and there's also interstellar hypotheses that suggest that they grew in space and then later fell on the surface of Earth. So we don't know actually where they come from."
He said research into the diamond would tell us, "a lot about what deep Earth interior minerology is like - what is the Earth made of and we just don't know the answers to these questions because we can't sample down that deep. With diamonds like this, this is a rare opportunity for us to see what exactly some of those materials are from the deep Earth interior."
Celestian added "Or, if it did come from space, what it would tell us is the evolution of our solar system, information about the evolution of planets in our solar system and that's also quite exciting so no matter what, I think really exciting research could come from these types of stones."
However, The Enigma may elude scientists as the black diamond is open to everyone with enough money or cryptocurrency.
The Sotheby's auction closes on February 9 at 0601 PST.
