One of my passions is prospecting. I know there is no gold at BlackRock, but that isn’t strictly what prospecting is. It’s more about finding and recovering valuable stuff in the dirt. I’ve heard it called “economic geology”, and I guess that’s pretty close to the mark. I see it as the pursuit of digging money out of the ground. To me, this is fun.
BlackRock is the core of a volcano that erupted around a million years ago. When it went, the type of rock it blew out is now one of the rarest rocks on the surface of the earth. It’s called Lamproite. There are several places where this rock can be found, and a few of them are mined, not for the Lamproite, but for what got blown to the surface with it.
Of all the types of gemstones we have, all but 2 of them form in the crust of the earth, which extends usually only 25-30 miles deep. Under that is the mantle, basically a soup of melted rocks just stirring around. At around 100 miles deep, the heat and the pressures are just right for our 2 types of crystals to form. One is called Peridot and the other is Diamond.
Of course, it’s the diamonds everyone’s digging for, but the peridot is an indicator mineral, so they look for them as well.
There are thousands of carats of gem quality peridot at BlackRock, but most of them are smaller than a grain of rice. But that’s not the point is it? They are there, in great abundance, surrounding the entire place.
Nobody has ever found diamonds there, and they might not be, but what’s the harm in looking :)
It’s called prospecting, and I am a prospector.