Diamonds are among nature’s most precious and beautiful creations.
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Figure 1. The Portuguese Placa dos Três Militares, or Badge of the Three Military Orders, was made in 1789, and is now part of the crown jewelry collection of the Ajuda National Palace in Lisbon. The badge consists of Brazilian diamonds as well as emeralds and rubies, and it is designed in a way to conceal the metal mounting and emphasize the gems. Photo by Manuel Silveira Ramos, courtesy of the Ajuda National Palace.
Figure 2. A Raman spectrum of the inclusion with a radiation halo shows a strong peak at 972 cm–1 and smaller peaks at 575 and 415 cm–1, all of which correspond to monazite.
Figure 1. Left: This 0.49 ct Fancy pink brown diamond, measuring 4.11 mm wide, contains a monazite inclusion with a brown radiation halo. Right: A photomicrograph of the monazite inclusion shows the halo thickness of about 10–20 µm. The inclusion’s color is masked by the brown radiation stain, but it appears to be yellow or colorless. The dark feature extending from the bottom of the inclusion is a graphitized crack. Field of view 0.36 mm. Photos by Jian Xin (Jae) Liao (left) and Evan Smith (right).
