A black diamond weighing 555.55 carats is going up for auction at Sotheby’s and living up to its name “The Enigma.”
Bidding opens on Thursday next week at 6am and closes on Feb. 9, Sotheby’s said, adding that cryptocurrency would be accepted for payment of the diamond.
It is the largest faceted Fancy Black Diamond known to ever appear at auction and was listed as the largest cut diamond in the world in the 2006 edition of Guinness World Records, Sotheby’s said.
Photo: Reuters
Also known as a carbonado diamond, it is possible the black diamond came from outer space. Carbonados of this structure have only been found in Brazil and the Central African Republic, and scientists have long theorized about their origins.
“They are shrouded in mystery as to the origin or formation because there’s not that many of them found on Earth,” said geologist Aaron Celestian, the curator of mineral sciences at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles.
Most carbonados are about 2.6 to 3.2 billion years old, Celestian said.
As Earth dates back 4.65 billion years, carbonados were formed when Earth’s plates were still moving and the oxygenation of the atmosphere was taking place, he said.
“We think that they could have formed super deep within the Earth’s interior, far deeper than what we know already of diamonds. There’s hypotheses that suggest that they formed at impact sites where a large asteroid hit Earth,” Celestian said.
“There’s also interstellar hypotheses that suggest that they grew in space and then later fell on the surface of Earth,” he added.
The Enigma has not been exhibited before and is expected to sell for between US$4 million and US$7 million. Its owner has had it for two decades, but little is known about its history.
Celestian believes research into the diamond would reveal a lot about deep-Earth mineralogy or the evolution of the solar system.
The diamond, which was exhibited in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, last week, was shown in Beverly Hills, California, this week before heading back to London for the auction.
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