14 DAY TRIAL // Pink diamonds aren't highly coveted just by the "girl who has it all;" scientists are equally fascinated by the rare stone, albeit for different reasons. Unless the scientist in question is one of said girls. In any case, some mystery of why pink diamonds are pink has now finally been uncovered.
Materials have different colors depending on their light reflection and absorption properties. For diamonds, these properties can be quite complex.
"What we've seen is that the diamond colour—the amount of absorption that gives it the pink colour—is dependent on both the wavelength and intensity of the light, and what that is consistent with is a model of electron transfer between the unknown pink defect and other defects in the lattice," PhD student Keal Byrne, who lead the research, explains.
What is special about pink diamonds is that they don't get their color from their defect centers which generate most other colored diamonds.
While scientists have been able to rule out some ideas and explain some of the behavior of pink diamonds, they still haven't been able to figure out exactly what causes the pink color.
What they did manage to figure out is that a defect center is responsible. The findings are published in the Diamond and Related Materials journal.