Blog · Editorial
Essays on the Carbonado Timeline
Each stage of the timeline, taken at greater length: what the published record says, where it is contested, and where ASA Digital Art’s own hypotheses begin. Every essay lists its references.
Editorial study. This essay describes no lot offered for sale. Carbonado’s origin is unresolved and debated. ASA Digital Art’s specimens are not identified as carbonado; no origin, space or otherwise, is claimed for any ASA Digital Art specimen or Luxurious Specimens lot.
1. Carbon-Rich Stellar Debris
Born in the Ashes of Stars?
How one research group came to argue that carbonado formed in the debris of dying stars, and why others disagree.
2. Carbonado Forms
Anatomy of a Black Diamond
What carbonado is made of—pores, patina, crystallites and exotic inclusions—and what each feature suggests.
3a. A Giant Diamond-Bearing Body
How Large Was the Parent Body?
What the published work says about the size of carbonado’s hypothetical parent body, and where ASA Digital Art’s own speculation begins.
3. Arrival on Early Earth
The Long Fall
How the space-origin hypothesis imagines carbonado reaching Earth, and the objections it must answer.
3b. A Shower Over One Region
A Concentrated Fall: An ASA Digital Art Hypothesis
ASA Digital Art’s speculative scenario of a concentrated fall and plasma-channel pores, set beside the published record.
3c. Landing in an Ancient Ocean
Into an Oxygenating Sea: An ASA Digital Art Hypothesis
ASA Digital Art’s idea that the fragments fell into the ocean during the Great Oxidation Event, and how it compares with published ages.
3d. The Land Rises and Becomes Desert
A Desert Interval: An ASA Digital Art Hypothesis
ASA Digital Art’s undated suggestion that the host land later rose and became desert, and what the geologic record can and cannot say.
3e. A Varnished Surface?
A Varnished Surface? An ASA Digital Art Observation
What desert varnish is, how carbonado’s dark surface is usually explained, and what ASA Digital Art has observed under the microscope.
4. Resting in an Ancient Landmass
Ancient Crust, Ancient Stones
What the ages of carbonado and its host cratons tell us.
5. Gondwana Breaks Up; The South Atlantic Opens
An Ocean Opens
How Gondwana broke apart and the South Atlantic divided one carbonado province into two.
6. Found Only in Brazil and the Central African Republic
Two Deposits, One Puzzle
Where carbonado is found, how it was mined and used, and the competing theories of its origin.
7. Florida’s Deep Basement: A Piece of Gondwana
Florida’s Gondwanan Foundations
The ancient African and South American rock beneath Florida’s young limestone.
8. Reworked into South Florida’s Sea Floor
The Young Stone of South Florida
What South Florida’s limestone is, how young it is, and ASA Digital Art’s untested idea about reworked material.
How the Theory Began
How the Theory Began
ASA Digital Art’s own account of how its specimens led to the ideas on these pages.
9. Turning Up During Construction
From Quarry to Road Base
How quarried limestone becomes construction material, and ASA Digital Art’s observations of what can surface in it.