Editorials

The unique physical chemistry of carbon confers an extraordinary ability to form molecules that are variously beautiful (think diamond), essential (think living cells), and toxic (think greenhouse gas). Nowhere is this split personality more evident than in the enigmatic igneous clan of kimberlites, the topic for this issue of Elements. No one who has set eyes on a cut diamond, especially the delicate pink stones from soon-to-close Argyle Mine in Western Australia (see photo to the right), can fail to be awestruck at Nature’s capacity for beauty. Kimberlite magmas that bring diamonds to the surface are carbon-fuelled, whether by methane through a complex series of redox melting reactions (see Foley et al. 2019 this issue p. 393), or by carbon dioxide exsolving from kimberlite melt at sub-crustal depths and propelling it explosively to the surface (see Russell et al. 2019 this issue p. 405). We have yet to witness a kimberlite erupt – the last known eruption, in Tanzania, was ten thousand years ago – but we can be fairly sure that the greenhouse gas delivery of a single kimberlite pipe in full flow was pretty substantial. For kimberlites, carbon is both passenger and propellant.

The periodic table of chemical elements is one of the most significant achievements in science because it arranges the 118 known elements in a deceptively simple pattern that reveals their properties. So how did this “Rosetta Stone of Nature” originate?

Mere centuries from now, almost every physical object you’ve bought or wrought will have disappeared from the face of the Earth. Nature’s forces will conspire to erase your archeological record. Unless you live in a stone manor, the foundations of your home will gradually crumble due to carbonic acid seeping into hairline cracks. Soil will migrate and turn over, shifting and consuming whatever objets d’art now grace your yard. Oxidation and sunlight will yellow and crack exposed plastic and paper. And everywhere, always, a teeming horde of plant roots, invertebrates, moles, and their microbial friends and relations will disaggregate and eat whatever they can. In the blink of a geological eye, almost your entire archaeological record will very likely be buried, broken down, and swept away.