Pulling power

摘要

What is the world's most valuable natural commodity? Gold? Platinum? Plutonium? Not even close. Diamonds. One large, flawless white diamond weighing just a few grams can be worth millions of dollars. Red diamonds are usually quite small, but because they are so rare - only twenty or so have ever been found - they are also extremely valuable. Edwin van Leeuwen, a mathematician by training, plans to find plenty more of both. Not that van Leeuwen would be overawed by such a diamond if he ever found one. He describes the best ones, like the Koh-i-Noor diamond in the late Queen Mother's crown, as "quite pretty". Van Leeuwen is turned on by the pursuit, not the prize. For ten years now, he's been searching out technologies that his Melbourne-based multinational company BHP Billiton can use to hunt down oil and minerals such as diamonds. His most successful project is Falcon, named for a bird that surveys the terrain from on high, then swoops down on its prey with merciless precision. The Falcon project has spawned the geophysicist's ultimate fantasy: a detector that can spot the minute changes in the Earth's gravitational field generated by hidden reserves of valuable ores or the rock formations associated with diamonds from an aircraft barrelling along at 185 kilometres per hour and 90 metres above the ground.