8 Popular 'Science Myths' Where The Truth Is Way Cooler

1. Diamonds Are Just Super-Compressed Coal

What better metaphor could their be for the arbitrary nature of value that human impose on the natural world? Diamonds are simply made of lowly coal, aren't we all idiots for buying into the con?

As poetic as that is, it's simply not true.

Coal is formed by prehistoric plant matter and is almost never found in the same place as diamonds. It is unlikely to migrate any deeper than two miles beneath the Earth's surface, whereas the conditions to create a diamond are generally only found at least 90 miles down.

Diamonds might not be that rare, but to say they're the same as coal does them a disservice. When dated, most diamonds are found to be way older than even the earliest plants on Earth and can be formed in the unbelievably extreme environments of volcanoes or the subduction zones in the planet's crust.

If you really want a diamond made from coal, you could always hit it with a meteorite, but that's arguably even cooler.

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