Slashdot Mirror
Diamond Age Coming Soon
Roland Piquepaille writes "In 'The many facets of man-made diamonds,' Chemical & Engineering News (C&EN) writes that synthetic diamonds are getting bigger and cheaper. An example: for Valentine's Day, you can buy a yellow colored man-made diamond, visibly indistinguishable from a natural one, for $4,000 per carat. This is a 30% discount when compared with a natural diamond. This very long article also says that if synthetic diamond makers are targeting the jewelry market first, these new products will have an impact on many other industries. Not only is it now possible to grow bigger diamonds, you also can choose their color. 'Colored diamonds, which are valuable and very rare, can be created by introducing carefully controlled elemental impurities into the stone,' says C&EN. For instance, nitrogen produces a yellow stone. Infusing boron into the growing diamond produces a blue gem. This overview contains some details, references and photos of men-made diamonds, but read the original article for even more technical explanations if you have the time."
The price would be a lot lower anyway. They've got tons of em, they just let out a select portion each year.
They're also sending hundreds people here to mine the diamonds for them.
...that I can't even afford the knock-off diamonds on this V-day, you insensitive clod!
-Valiss
$4,000 a karat sounds a bit higher than a natural diamond.
"Look...I got you this overpriced diamond...and its all nice and yellow"
slashdot, news for crazed liberal socialist zealots
The next girl who fakes an orgasm with me will get one of these. Then we'll see who's a fat jobless loser.
I also reply below your current threshold.
Thought so
Better break out the liquid nitrogen cooling system.
There is no god
$4,000 per carat is a 30% discount? I'm so glad I don't collect jewelry..
Twenties Retirement
The diamond industry (mining, cutting, and selling) is quite large. Is it possible they can convince governments to regulate the man-made ones, and have them somehow marked to allow people to note the difference? It may seem a bit out-there, but there's a lot of money at stake for a lot of people.
G
Aparently I'm not the only one that can't afford a knock-off diamond.
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
I visited a friend's workplace last week, a machine shop.
He said that diamond tooling has made a big change in his workplace, allowing heat treated steel to be machined rather than ground.
Didn't i just see something about lots and lots of cheap diamonds posted on /. ?
I understand it is time to sell my bag of diamonds before they still have some value :)
M.
--
That would save me some bucks this Valentine's Day...
Way to go, slashdot! This is just what the few geeks who actually have significant others want to hear...ON VALENTINE'S DAY AFTERNOON!!!!!
Perhaps last week or before would have served us a bit better, eh?
That's because boron has only three outer-shell electrons and can make only three of four bonds that carbon normally does in the diamond lattice. The result is a missing electron or "hole" that can move freely through the crystal, allowing the diamond to conduct positive charge.
I'm a bit confused about this paragraph. If a diamond can only conduct positive charge, then it would be a power source? Have they discovered unlimited energy?
"visibly indistinguishable from a natural one"..suuure buddy, let me introduce you to a new and sofisticated tool for certifying the authenticity of a diamond, the girlfriend. Somehow they always know...damn it
Tommy: What's got him creased?
Kev: It's a diamond
Tommy: The fuckin' thing's brown.
Paul: It's called champagne; it's a trend
Tommy: Oh right, they were calling it "piss", but they weren't moving any units
synthetic diamond company owners. He started getting death threats when his diamonds were starting to threaten the sales of the DeBeers cartel. Given how DeBeers operates and maniuplates unstable, brutal governments in Africa it's not that suprising.
The Diamond Age
~Anztac
Dude, this is Slashdot.
Our imaginary girlfriends would be more than happy with a cubic zirconia. ;)
I like big butts and I cannot lie.
are likely mined in poor Africian countries with DeBeer's cartel has control of the government and will turn the other way when that government forces children into the state militias. Many of the natural diamonds floating around the market were born out of murder.
They have *more* defects than the artificial ones.
Trust us Brits to come up with this - we had a news article on TV a while back about getting the ashes of your cremated loved ones turned into yellow diamonds ! The coloration comes from the nitrogen content of the ashes apparently.
"I am not bound to please thee with my answers" [William Shakespeare]
isn't that offensive? perhaps they prefer to be called diamonds of color?
My problem? I was perfectly gruntled, until some numbnuts came by and dissed me.
Timely topic! http://abcnews.go.com/wire/US/ap20040213_1479.html
10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 carats, folks. /diamond futures surrender
It's in electronics. Diamonds have plenty of intersiting properites that make them highly desirable for semiconducter applications, as well as heatsinks. See this article for some info. There's a problem, though, real diamonds simply don't come large enough, pure enough, and in the right kinds to make this practical on anything but a small scale. This will not be a problem with synthetics, they can cook up whatever kind they like, and Apollo at least makes them very, very pure. That's where the real money will be at. As big as jewelry is, it pales in comparison to eveltonics, espically given that we will eventually hit the limit of what silicon is capable of. The synthetic makers are basically just using jewelry as a means to an end, to finance their bussiness to get them to the state where they can start mass producing for other uses.
These new diamonds are nothing compared to BPM 37093.
I'm a signature virus. Please copy me to your signature so I can replicate.
I hear the DeBeers uses a laser to etch their own logo on diamonds. I'm sure the logo is really small, but this is done to authenticate the real thing. So even if fake diamonds are cheaper and better, DeBeers will still sell their own "natural" rocks based purely on marketing.
And with synthetics, you can't use their logo or it would be trademark infringement.
Life is not for the lazy.
...is that it's a DIAMOND. Not some imitation like quartz or whatever else they make them out of. A diamond ring NEEDS to have a diamond or else it loses all meaning.
My boss has been diamonds sythethically between his ass cheeks for years.
...never get old. Perhaps they are made of diamonds.
1952 was the year that man made diamonds made their debut. Despite all the innacurate blather from Wired, we can still tell man made from natural diamond.Spectroscopic examination of Chemical Vapour Deposition (CVD) created diamonds, which is the method Apollo uses, or the classic High Pressure/High temperature (HPHT) method, both have characteristic absorption spectra. Furthermore, there are some clues to be had with less esoteric equipment. CVD diamonds have a chararacteristic strain pattern in the crystal structure that is discernable. HPHT diamonds are more identifiable, as the gemmologist community has had more time to examine them... decades.
Man made emeralds and rubies have been made for decades, and in many cases are superior. Chatham offers a life time warranty on their emeralds for example. It hasn't destroyed the price of emeralds, as there are enough people who want the real thing, much like many people can paint a repica of the Mona Lisa, down to the brush strokes, but the real thing is still more expensive.
The real problem as far as the jewellery industry is concerned is that unscrupulous people try and sell these as real, and less knowledgeable jewellers pass them on to consumers. I have no problems selling man made stones as man made stones, but disclosure is the important part. I expect that this might even drive the price of diamonds that are certified as natural up, due to the difficulty but not impossibility of identification.
p.s. To those people who think that diamonds are overpriced due to DeBeers, why is it that now that DeBeers no longer controls the industry (less than half of worldwide production now goes through DeBeers), why have prices stayed stable? Could it be that the price of mining and cutting is reflected in the price of diamonds, and that the pricing actually is correct?
~ a low user id is no indication I have a clue what I'm talking about.
Wired Magazine had a cover-story about synthetic diamonds a few months back with some pretty detailed information. Slashdot covered the story here.
It's only a matter of times before diamonds become cubic zircona like in prices. Well as long as these guys don't patent the whole process.
Best Community for Gaming and Gadgets!
The bitter end will come in 2023, when Apollo Diamond's U.S. patents on chemical vapor deposition are scheduled to expire.
That would save me some bucks this Valentine's Day...
:)
It shouldn't.
Let's say that, each year, you spend about 3% of your income between Valentine's Day, her birthday, and your anniversary. With a $50,000 income, that's 'just' about $500 each.
If you can get cheaper gifts, you should simply get more gifts. Instead of an apparant $500 diamond ring that you bought for $250, you could get her an apparant $1000 ring for $500.
Or, in the case of the Good Ones, instead of making the choice between a ring and an ipod, you could get her both.
DeBeers will still sell their own "natural" rocks based purely on marketing.
Likewise, Coca-Cola had a monopoly on cola soft drinks until Pepsi and RC came around. Some people will always prefer De Beers's conflict diamonds, but others will prefer Apollo brand cultured products, and competition will drive prices down until the bottom falls out of the market in 2023 when Apollo's patents run out.
So we now can create artificial Chaos Emeralds of all seven colors?
Find a way to get BPM 37093 or just a large part of it returned to Earth, and you'll have DeBeers out of business instantly...
For those of you who haven't followed diamonds for a while, De Beers is arguably the largest and most prolific monopoly in the world, having survived, among other incidents, an American anti-trust inquiry with its reputation, and vicariously that of diamonds, entirely unscathed.
There are several forms of producing synthetic diamonds, and the closer these synthetic diamonds are to real ones, the more likely the company will be bought and all its intellectual property dissolved.
One company is Apollo Diamond, I recall. From what I understand, their research is conducted in the back of a pharamacy in an undisclosed mall somewhere in the USA.
Apparently, threatening to undermine a multi-billion dollar industry is very risky. I seem to recall there have been numerous coincidental deaths related to diamonds, diamond mines, and synthetic diamonds. Like all things involving enormous economics, life, liberty, and security of person are hardly the most important.
So does that make this the stone age?
There was a show on Gerogia Public Television last night about Australia's diamond mine called Argile and the rare pink diamond that it produces.
They don't even mention the prices because they go into private collections.
Actually Rubies and Saphires are a more rare gem.
I think I would actually prefer a man made diamond, in places like Sierra Leone and Congo diamond mining is the cause huge amounts of criminal violence and suffering.
In group behavior: 'because they're evil/morons/sheep/crazy' is not 'insightful' it's 'oversimplified'
A few years ago, there was an exellent installment of NOVA that looked into the whole natural/synthetic diamond business. Everything from the early history of how DeBeers cornered the market to the (then) latest attempts at producing gem quality crystals.
Stay sentient. Don't drink bad milk.
Parent poster...so, which branch of DeBeers do you work for?
Boycott everything - they're all trying to fuck you one way or another
gemming in real life. Finnaly real life is becoming more like MMORPG's. Now if only we could make up some Orc's...
-- TRUST ME! I KNOW WHAT I'M DOING!
Here's something: Literally give your significant other the sun . . . A white dwarf diamond that is!
Scientists from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, the University of Cambridge, and UFSC Brazil have identified in the constellation Centaurus what is likely to be the fate of our own sun. With a rhythmically harmonious core and a 'suface' of hydrogen and helium this carbon-predominant cellestial body is known as BPM 37093. It is the largest diamond ever indentified in the wild at Twenty-five hundred miles across and weighing 5 million trillion trillion pounds!". Artistic Representainions and Videos are available here.
The Catto Diamond
A businessman boarded a plane to find, sitting next to him, an elegant woman wearing the largest, most stunning diamond ring he had ever seen.
He asked her about it.
"This is the Catto diamond," she said. "It is beautiful, but there is a terrible curse that goes with it."
"Oh - what's the curse?" the man asked.
"Mr. Catto."
Stuff that matters.
You would need to make like 80G to take home 50.
I say enough of this. I'm tired of diamond being the best at everything. Let's all surround diamond after posting, and set it straight. Maybe we can go all Orwell on this holier-than-thou tetrahedral structure, and erase it from history. Now who's the hardest, huh?
Diamond thinks is so tough....
Try extremely hard, optically clear from infrared through ultraviolet, and a near-superconductor for heat. If we are going to have optical chips enter the mainstream, it's probably going to be diamond rather than silicon for the substrate.
I for one like the idea of factory diamonds just to drive down the price. I bought an engagement ring once and spent a pretty penny too, only to have the engagement broken off. Next time I hope that I don't have to spend as much.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
I always thought $50 buys a fine valentine gift. Anyone who seriously considers spending a few thousand dollars on a valentine gift should reconsider their spending habits and/or relationship.
;) caught me
~ a low user id is no indication I have a clue what I'm talking about.
...that DeBeers manage to persuade everyone, with a cunning advertising campaign, that there's nothing like a natural diamond, and that she'd be insulted to receive anything artificial as an engagement present? After all, it worked for cubic zirconia... They can afford it, and they do have an awful lot to lose if they fail.
Ceterum censeo subscriptionem esse delendam.
The resorting of finding ways to distinguish crystalline properties, is just a stalling tactic on the part of the diamond industry. I doubt the public cares about minute differences in the crystalline structure if all other properties are identical (which is not the case for say cubic-zirconium).
Should the public care, then eventually technology will find a way to make the diamonds the same on even this level. More likely synthetic diamonds will exceed natural diamonds in purity and regularity of structure. The diamond cartel will try to convince the public (unsuccessfully) that they want inferior natural diamonds, and the whole thing will collapse.
For a while the two may exist side by side, much like the cultured pearl industry and natural pearls, but it will have a depressive effect on the price of natural diamonds.
The writing is on the wall my friend.
Letter To Iran
That DeBeers practices mafioso like tactics to stay on top of that industry.
We're talking business related killings, really bad stuff. There is serious corruption in the industry, and buy diamonds only supports it.
The interesting point about that Wired article is that the owner of one of the companies is not really interested in making money in diamonds via selling it as jewelry. Rather, he may be selling some as jewelry to bankroll more research in developing diamonds that are large enough to supplant silicon in creating new types of computer processors. The semiconductor business is where the money's at. In fact, that's how he originally made his fortune, as an engineer in Silicon Valley developing chips. When he dropped everything and pursued diamonds, many thought he was a kook. Both heads of the companies fear for their lives, I'd imagine, and rightly so -- you don't know how ruthless DeBeers can be.
Linux at home
I get my windows made out of diamond and be cheaper then glass; Then we'll be in an diamond age
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
For those who wish to focus on the jewelry side (since the story is really more about alternative uses for the synthetic diamonds), specifically things like diamond (engagement) rings; a most excellent previous slashdot story with a wide range of views and insightful ( whether moderated as such or not ;) ) posts from men and women alike :3 /20 10256&mode=nested&tid=99
http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/08/1
My neighbor has really bad hips and needs to have them replaced (she's only 28).
Current replacement hips may last 20 years if you're lucky.
A Utah man (I live in Utah) has invented hip replacements that are made of man-made diamonds and the joint never wears out. A single replacement could last a lifetime (rather than 4 surgeries for a 28 year old that lives to be 90).
They aren't available yet, so they can't decide whether to wait or get the best that is currently available...
Ah, I forgot that with gifts it was the price that counts.
Gemesis have a gallery showing the usage of their stones in jewellery (also it seems some are from the Accendo Collection,
Accendo Collection a reseller of cultured diamonds also make jewellery and also a loose stone inventory and pricelist.
Or alternatively (if you have the cash) there are other authorised retailers
It is probably wise to bear in mind, that unless the manufacturers can keep the prices close to mined diamond prices, there is no incentive to buy. If I believe a cultured diamond I will buy will produced at a lower price in a few months, I will feel disappointed to put it lightly. However, regardless of cost. I'd prefer a manufactured diamond to a mined diamond. The history surrounding most areas involved in diamond trade and companies involvement in it does not endear me to them.
Personally however I'd like one of these diamonds, however I've never really liked Yellow, regardless of its fancy nature. I prefer blue or black.
Anything that helps destroy their hegemony I'm all in favor of; they're worse than Microsoft and Wal-Mart together in my book.
Luckily for the me, the wifal unit doesn't hates diamonds so I've never had to buy one.
Any woman that ends up with me knows right from the start not to expect diamonds or gold from me. I have no problem buying jewlery, but I buy from independant artisans. Not only does it support the little guy but to me it means lot more to give a unique, one of a kind gift as opposed to some generic diamond/gold piece that you can buy in any mall in the country.
"Nobody knows the age of the human race, but everybody agrees that it is old enough to know better." - Unknown
are neither valuable nor rare... They are commonly known as Industrial Diamonds.
Oh well, what the hell...
MOD PARENT UP +6 informative
I understand and appreciate the amount of labor involved in digging "real" gems out of the ground - and this adds to the intrinsic value of those things. [Of course there is some monoplistic markup, too, but that is not the point.] At the end of the day, the utility of a material good is what counts. Just about any other kind of stuff you can think of gets cheaper all the time [adjusted for inflation] - why shouldn't diamonds? [Boo Hoo, De Beers... Boo Hoo RIAA... both of you have distribution models being upset by technology]
In general, I like machine-made, manufactured goods anyhow. I don't really care for artsy-crafty things. Would you rather have a robot-built flow-soldered TV, or some hand-made thing made by the local hobbiest?
"Fake" diamonds are still diamonds - just without all the human toil to get them (and without natural imperfections!) Why should my gems be any different? [Even most "art" - I can enjoy and appreciate copies. Why do I need the original? Heh, if you like some of my programming, I'll sell you the original bits if you like.] How long before they manufacture gems with imperfections so that they seem more natural?
Here is a question I have always had - if you have something that is atomically/chemically/perfectly identical to something else - why isn't it the same? Where do you draw the line? Mfg carbon crystal = diamond. Why is a conterfeit gold coin worth less than a "real" gold coin, if they are both made out of gold and struck with the same dies? Makes you wonder about printed currency. What if you fake the bits that represent my bank account? Now I am getting waaay OT...
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
Scientists to DeBeers: FUCK YOU!!!
Manipulate the moderator system! Mod someone as "overrated" today.
Its amazing to me that we all know diamonds are NOT rare at all, yet we still pay a premium for them. Anyone who watched the discovery channel knows that there are in fact HUGE stores of diamonds held back to keep the price up. I would be willing to bet that colored diamonds are not that rare at all, but are kept back in all but tiny numbers to make them seem that way. We know that DeBeers is evil. We know that deal in blood diamonds so they are certainly not above this.
Heck ADM and its competitors were in a global plot to keep lycean (spelling) prices high for years and they weren't killing people, so just think how far DeBeers would go. \
Assuming that the diamonds are not rare at all as most of us know, what then is the point of making them? They are only cheaper then the inflated price but would most likely be more expensive if people knew the truth about diamonds. IMHO anyways.
Did anybody else read this title and expect to hear about nanotechnology, a la Neal Stephenson's book of the same name?
UNIX: Find it, fsck it, forget it.
As an undergraduate at the University of Alabama, I work for the MINT Center (Materials for Information Technolgies). In one of our seminars I learned that when creating synthetic diamonds the crystaline structure can be doped to be a semiconductor. It can be either n or p doped. Meaning that if the technology matures then we may be able to replace silicon with diamond, a material which will take eons to deteriate. These simiconducters also stand up to radiation (important to nasa) much better than our current stuff.
(Clarkian), is nearly upon us... Man made diamonds, aerogel, carbon nanotube space elevators, high temp superconductors, cloning, neural implants, photonics, spintronics, flexible organic leds. And we're just getting started...
All Abstract Structures of Objects and their Relationships exist.
...but I think The Diamond Age has been here for at least three years.
qntm.org
There is even a third type of diamond that has been developed at City University in Hong Kong. It differs from the one found in nature (a cubic form) and the one found in meteorites (a hexagonal form) by the way the carbon atoms bond to each other: rhombohedral form.
Restore America: Dr. Ron Paul for President!
i just gave my girlfriend a diamond
;-P
now you tell me it's worth as much as the chocolates and champagne
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
The diamond industry has made countless billions creating and popularizing traditions like the diamond engagement ring or the idea that a good diamond for you is two months salary. (Where do they get this stiff?)
Now, if you look in any womans fashion magazine you will see an advertisement for the new idea of the womans right-hand diamond ring to represent some sort of personal empowerment. You've come an even longer way, baby!
They face their ultimate marketing challenge, which they may pull off, in trying to differentiate factory made diamonds indistinguishable from mined ones as somehow inferior.
Good luck, super rich!
Syntax error: loose != lose, affect != effect, then!=than
Of the two technologies, Gemesis diamonds do come out yellow because of Nitrogen impurities. They can also make clear, but it takes longer (read: more expensive) because they include nitrogen getters and have to grow more slowly.
It's not wasting time, I'm educating myself.
They look the same, but could you use the phony diamonds for industrial uses that real diamonds are used for? ie. diamond-tipped drill bits? Would they hold up?
A reader wrote in complaining the image was photoshopped, and wired printed the letter and appoligized.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
How long until we get focusing crystals for our homemade lightsabers? ;)
Now if only they can make Mox Diamonds cheaper...
So does that mean some diamonds call their friends "Ma' Diggers" ?
*Rimshot*
*Ducks incoming tomatoes and -1 Troll mods*
This is awesome news. Now I can have diamonds on the soles of my shoes.
Your post would have been valid seven years ago.
Kimberly Process. It is being taken very seriously in the trade, and for very selfish reasons, as well as ethical ones. The idea of children with their legs cut off does not sell diamonds. The diamond industry has made every effort to sort it out. Compare our attitude to that of the clothing industry while they continue to use third world slave labour.
~ a low user id is no indication I have a clue what I'm talking about.
Expect PR campaigns emphasizing "the natural flaws of diamonds".
I, for one, would pay a premium for a diamond's profits went to high-tech inventors instead of to slave owners.
The reason a $10,000 diamond is valuable is because it cost $10,000. If it cost $100, you just bought your girl -- the love of your life -- a symbol worth less than an XBox.
Rarity in fashion is a strange thing; the cost of the object becomes an inherent part of the value -- it's not that the object is worth some certain amount, it's that the acquisition of it was so horrifyingly expensive and difficult that only a very precious few could achieve it. To gift someone with the results of this effort -- that's a sign of significance.
This might seem difficult to comprehend, so let me jump domains for a moment. What's the value of a moon rock? I mean, it's just rock from the moon; we could probably synthesize something chemically identical trivially. Ah, lets say you got an award, and were given the moon rock as a prize. Tell me you wouldn't show it off to everyone.
Same sh*t -- only difference is, instead of the cost being that of a trip to the moon, the cost is an enormous amount of one's savings. The price of diamonds is set high enough to be interesting but low enough to be possible.
It has NOTHING AT ALL to do with the value of the rocks themselves.
--Dan
I loved in college (I went to an Ivy League school, so it's worse there) how all the women are still idealistic and romantic and have ridiculously high standards, and being college-age are of course very loud and indiscreet. You get to overhear (or worse, take part in) some wonderful conversations that, if you're a complete nerd like me, will pretty much ruin your week.
One of my favorites was a girl (who I worked with at the time) who said that if *her* (hypothetical) boyfriend asked her to marry him, he'd better have at least a 2-carat ring for her or she'd break up with him immediately. Some women could have said this and it would have been taken as a joke, but not her. (I imagine every guy who read that email felt his testicles recede into his body cavity.)
Now I'm in grad school, so there are actually girls getting married and showing off their shiny new rings, which is even more depressing. (Especially since on my salary I'd probably have to pawn my laptop to buy even a fake diamond.)
is a diamond freak
she loves diamonds so much she s got at least one on every finger.
so when the Wired article mentionned earlier in this thread came out, i printed it and handed her a copy.
she said "whoa, if diamonds get cheaper, that means i'll be able to buy more!"
this is from someone who told me she doesnt care where diamonds come from, child labor, bloody rebels, or not.
Want to create diamond films under relatively low-temperature, low-power, mild conditions? See http://blacklightpower.com/pdf/technical/Diamond88 121503.pdf.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
http://edwardjayepstein.com/diamond/prologue.htm
Paying $5k for a tiny rock just because it's pretty is pretty dang crazy when you think about it. Okay, I can see paying for artisan jeweler's beautiful hand crafted creation, paying for a cutter's expertise, etc. But when you think that most $5k rocks are churned out in an assembly line just to end up at the local Zales for $5k a pop.... Does this seem a bit too much like the Dot Com era? As soon as folks wake up, the market is gonna colapse. An artificially inflated industry just waiting to be 'rightsized'. Natural diamonds aren't really that rare anyway. It's only DeBeers iron fist that keeps the price high.
Of course, Krups made gas chambers for the third reich, but they still make a badass espresso machine; GE's weaponry has killed more men than measles. Most sizable corporations which have been around long have a checkered past. While I'm mentioning the third reich, I guess I oughta bring up Mercedes and Volkswagen, too.
I'm not sure what my point was in general, but I'm pretty sure that in general, the odds of getting a diamond which came from someone you don't want to support are far too high. I know there are diamonds which are certified to have been processed without ruining anyone's lives, but in general the industry is overinflated because of the actions of some terrible ruthless people, and I'm committed to avoiding natural diamonds at this point. Especially when the artificial ones are going to be cheap as hell and distinguishable from the natural ones mostly because their quality will be higher.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
My girlfriend was like these demons of whom you speak when we got together, as she was going into her first year of college.
After a year and a half with me, her standards have dropped considerably, and she considers a $5 gift a huge treat.
I must be a great boyfriend! Yeah!
Personally, I'm glad that the price of diamonds is so high... I don't care if it's a monopoly or not. If diamonds weren't worth so much, there wouldn't be as much R&D dollars spent towards developing synthetic diamonds... and without that technology, the "diamond age" of electronics would be much much farther in the future.
her eyes look baby-blue from where you're standing
One of my favorites was a girl (who I worked with at the time) who said that if *her* (hypothetical) boyfriend asked her to marry him, he'd better have at least a 2-carat ring for her or she'd break up with him immediately.
I'dlike to pull a Churchill on her. Tell her you don't have a diamond ring, but you would give her $50 to sleep with you once. "We already know what kind of girl you are, we're just haggling over the price."
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
And when your heating / cooling bill goes through the roof because you lined your house with a great thermal conductor? I'd rather spend the cash on aerogel insulation in the walls.
"You saved 1968." - Ms. Valerie Pringle to the crew of Apollo 8
given there was a story on Wired a while back detailing how the synthetic brigade could make large gem-quality diamonds for under $100 each. Whether it's de Beers taking the other $5100 or the synthetic diamond companies taking the other $3900, I'll wait for a few competitors to emerge; then diamonds may become the intrinsically worthless arragements of atoms they are. There are far prettier things than gems.
"'I pass the test,' she said. 'I will diminish, and go into the West, and remain Galadriel.'"
- JRR Tolkien.
A better marking plan for someone brave enough to pull it off:
The kind of diamond you give says a lot about you. A nateral diamond minded by children in a country where the bosses encourage war for their own profit sends a message. Or you can get an XYZ diamond, are a flawless creation of the american working man, paid a living wage.
A real marketing person could write much better copy than me, but you get the idea. In fact I encourage them to do so and require no credit for my idea. Gaphic images of bloody war, and children working will help you a long. Make sure you stick to facts though because you want reproters to check and find you are right.
Perhaps a better idea would be to start a synthetic diamond group to encourage the adoption of synthetic diamonds (you will need all the political help you can get). Evaluate working conditions of all members and let the best use your stamp of approval (like De Beers puts marks on some diamonds) - but let a few miners use the mark too.
Whatever, do not play a defensive game against De Beers, they are too good.
He's a link troll. Read his journal.
The real diamond people are gonna keep buying real diamonds as long as they have the money, this is a better solution to "OH SHIT! I forgot to pay the $20,000 wedding ring" problem, personally, I think this is great, because if I want to give my girl a nice ring, I can.
however, for them to waste this on the jewelry industry is what bothers me, the fact that now we can create diamond is something we need to embrace because we can now make diamond-tipped drills and saws cheaper, and can make quality car parts, (aka, racing parts for real muscle cars) etc.
That's where the money is.
of course, people do like shiny things so jewelry will prolly suffice, all I say is that it's a giant waste of a new source of one of the toughest elements in nature.
As i understand it, although an extremely strong physical substance, the chemical nature isn't quite so resilient, and they break down over 10,000 years or so. I'm not quoting facts here, just something i vaguely remember from chemistry.
When's spam when you need it?
A NYC lawyer blogs. http://www.chuangblog.com/
Let's all just pray that DeBeers isn't getting any ideas about our own favorite star after reading this article.
If you're going to have an imaginary girlfriend, you need to learn to do it right. My imaginary girlfriend was quite happy with a new copy of Metroid: Zero Mission.
I mean, hell, may as well go for broke.
Valentines, anniversaries, weddings, funerals, all will be made cheaper by fugasi. I dunno about you, but the feeling of a padded wallet on my left asscheek sure feels good.
http://www.psikon.com/
That's a lot. Why the hell would anyone pay that amount anyway, because the stone isn't natural in the first place and they can make 10e6 pieces a year on a production line just like cars and other goods. Why would anyone want a diamond that's not unique at 30% discount from the real thing? I mean it has to cost a fraction of the equivalent real diamond. I bet the production costs are a fraction of what they seel the diamonds for.
So...A Diamond is Forever, but DeBeers isn't. Good.
Jewelry stores use numerous small, bright lights (metal halide, I suppose) to have the best chance to flashing pretty refractions to the potential buyer. Makes all stones look better, not just the bad ones.
Me, I'm waiting until they grow 10 by 12 inch wafers cheap enough to use for tower windows. And I'll bet you could make some really bitchin' snow tires with them, but I guess the potholes might be a problem.
Where exactly *does* DeBeers keep all those hoarded stones? Seems to me that a few hundred nerds with assault rifles ought to be able to knock it off; that might even solve our Valentine's problems....
Anti-gravity? That was *my* little secret! But I never patented it! Boy, was *that* dumb!
Pussywhipped != in love
What better way to find out fast that you were about to marry the wrong woman?
Anti-gravity? That was *my* little secret! But I never patented it! Boy, was *that* dumb!
The Diamond Age will be nothing compared to the Al Franken Diamond Age.
Try THIS.
Do you or your partner snore? - Visit www.snoring.com.au
Furthermore, those who come up with a diamond mine not controled by DeBeers can still be crushed because there are many types of diamonds, and no mine find is going to generate all of them
Funny you should mention that... I just saw a show (Discovery? PBS? Can't recall precisely) that showed an Australian diamond firm that's the "new kid on the block" because of the tenacity of it's founder. The Aussie studied geology and knew there should be diamonds in this one region of northwest Australia, and after something like 5 years of walking around, panning in streams, then walking around some more, he finally hit the mother load.
Anyway, the reason this company isn't going away any time soon is because the diamonds that come from this source are almost all red and pink diamonds, the most rare diamond on the planet. The firm would have an exclusive sale every year that was invite-only, and the show was able to document one guy who tried to make a bid on their choice 10 pieces. These things were, no kidding, mere millimiters in size. The largest one was I think half a carat. He bid 4 mil, and didn't get it (they naturally don't reveal the amount of the winning bid).
I, for one, long for the day when we no longer prize such stupidly common elementals like Diamonds for more practical, rare gifts. Nothing says "I love you" like an Iridium baseball bat.
The term for what the diamond structure is at room temperature is "metastable", which means it isn't stable, but may as well be since you don't care what is going to happen to the diamond in a few thousand years at room temperature.
As for the chemical vapour deposition machines, the technique is simple and the machines are relatively cheap (I used to work in the same room as one in a fairly poorly funded university), and there are quite a few now being used in industry to put diamond and other coatings on things. The trick is always getting the reaction to occur at the surface, and getting things to stick.
Industrial diamond coatings that just have to be hard is one thing, but things that have to be low in flaws or have carefully placed impurities (doped semicondutor junctions) are a bit trickier, or things with large thicknesses (a dirty great big rock to put on someones finger instead of a ten micron thick layer) are also tricky. The old way of producing artificial diamonds, used by DuPont, is to wrap explosives around some graphite and set it off. This produces lots of nice little diamonds, which are great if you don't care about optical properties (they look black) or size (average around 0.1 mm). This is of course completely useless for electronics or jewelry, and it's not that easy to stick little diamonds together to make a large solid object (you need to hit it really hard and really fast, and you can't hit it fast enough in a normal atmosphere).
You guys are all guilty of trivializing what is probably a breakthrough in materials science equal to the semiconductor IC or plastic.
:)
Sure right now these guys are pricing their rocks at Thou$and$ per Carat because they are trying to wrestle up enough venture capital to push to bigger and better production levels in the future.
Now let's try to see beyond the shiny bling blings and see where this technology is gonna take us in the next few decades.
How much would Uncle Sam be willing to pay for a Solid Diamond Tank? Or for that matter a diamond-clad warhead for an anti tank missile? Potentially it'll become possible to "grow" enormous sizes and oddball shapes virtually as easily as we press out fiberglass today. I wonder how easily automobiles with diamond structural components can pass NHSA crash tests? How about replacing home and business windows with diamond sheets instead of tempered glass?
The potential applications are mind boggling to say the least. Undoubtedly the production costs will come down as the technology matures and by the time the patents expire we'll start seeing diamond consumer junk on every shelf. The jewelry industry better sell off its stockpiles while they can for whatever price they can get cause in a few decades a 5 carat diamond will be about as valuable as a 70's era mood ring.
The only real downside I can see about this is how do we dispose of obsolete diamond artifacts when we're done with them? How do you scrap 30 sq. ft. sheets of obsolete diamond window glass?
Personally I'd love to own a chunk of Apollo right now, but they haven't announced an IPO yet. Shiny eye candy and IC wafers are just the beginning of a materials revolution that's gonna blow a hole in conventional industry in a few years, and we're standing here babbling about shiny chunks of glass-like material that we overpay for in the hopes of getting laid
But according to the article:
> Today's speedy microprocessors run hot - at upwards of 200 degrees Fahrenheit. In fact, they can't go much faster without failing. Diamond microchips, on the other hand, could handle much higher temperatures, allowing them to run at speeds that would liquefy ordinary silicon.
Which is correct?
Slashdot monitor for your Mozilla sidebar or Active Desktop.
Several hundred degrees Celsius?
Yet what many don't know is that in bulk, normal diamonds have even more of a markup at least from source. So if we are going to limit ourselves to the jewelry market then basically you are looking at competing with the cartels like Debeers. Better charge extra to keep the legal and physical goons away.
Even if you wave a sign that says "We are only building up capital for computing industry use" you will still not get off easy from the jewelry mafia.
So, will computing also include light shows so that soon you can wear diamonds with "diamond LED's"?
Surely, with such detailed instructions, any self respecting nerd can grow his own diamond. With proper dopant control you can get the color to exactly match her eyes, beating by many leagues the jock who is stuck having to purchase an overpriced hunk of colorless rock.
Er, I suspect diamonds are *very* stable. They've been in the ground for around a billion years, plus anything that hard is likely to have very strong and stable bonds.
"The real problem as far as the jewellery industry is concerned is that unscrupulous people try and sell these as real,"
They *ARE* real. A daimond is a diamond is a diamond.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
Diamond has a very high heat conductivity -- perhaps the highest of any material. So you could remove the heat at much higher rates from diamond than you could from silicon. So though the melting point for diamond is lower than that of silicon it is much easier to keep diamond based chips cool.
We are entering the era when the paste between your chip and your heat sink may not be "silver paste" but "diamond paste" (or the heat sinks themselves may be made out of diamonds).
Diamond is also normally an insulator, just like the sapphire used in SOI chips, unlike silicon which is a semiconductor, so chips based on diamond have very interesting properties relative to chips based on silicon for the control of electron loss via leakage as well as heat removal.
Robert
yeah, the parent post is really flamebait. look at the fucking response it got from the grandparent. slashdot moderation is broken.
"At a few hundred degrees the transformation [of diamond] would occur in seconds instead of thousands of years, and you would end up with very expensive bits of graphite."
In air (which is about 20% oxygen) diamonds will withstand heat to around 1560 degrees Fahrenheit. It is not necessary for jewelers to remove diamonds from jewelry prior to soldering it with a blowtorch. If you coat a diamond with boric acid, you can heat it to higher temperatures then that.
Diamonds Lasting Forever
Don't forget Mitsubishi, who used American POW's during WWII for slave labor in their iron mines. I know there was another company to do that too, I think it starts with an 'N', but since I'm not sure of the name, I'll leave it at that.
Slashdot is proof that Sturgeon's Law applies to mankind.
not if you're using it as gambling collateral
The "liquify silicon" comment is a bit odd, since silicon melts at a fairly high temperature (above 1700C), but long before then other stuff is going to happen that causes failure of the chip. All of those carefully doped and very small junctions are going to get hot and atoms are going to diffuse everywhere, leaving you with resistors instead of transistors. Various bits of metal leading into the chip (have to get those pins on somehow) may have a much lower meting point (Aluminium or copper, or gold) and if they go the chip is useless. A distributed temperature of 200F is nothing to silicon or diamond (although conductivity of a semiconductor varies with temperature), it's the hot spots that matter, and a higher conductivity gets the heat away and reduces the maximum temperature of the hot spots. Silicon is a really poor conductor, but that hasn't mattered for transistors before. Diamond conducts a huge amount better - the overall temperature may be higher but the maximum is going to be very close to the avaerage temperature.
Oh man, those guys in Iraq were actually trying to make diamonds and not A-bombs, so the explosives were wrapped around graphite instead of uranium. No wonder the WMD search squad didn't find anything. Thanks for the explanation.
There are tons of high-quality artifical diamonds created every year, but they are so-called "industrial diamonds" for use in things like saw blades, etc. They are tiny compared to the diamonds these guys are producing.
Wired magazine had an article a few months ago that was actually quite good.
Actually you are wrong. A diamond can be heated for several minutes, without losing its shape or color, and during all that time it can be so hot that it would emit white light. And yes, it would be so hot inside out.
"Silver solder melts at a fairly low temperature"
Yes, tin or lead based silver solders can melt around 400 F, but that kind of solders are not very useful for jewelry. Jewelers use hard silver solders, which melt at 1400-1600 F, and silver melts at around 1700-1760 F.
Usually for diamonds more appropriate is gold or platinum, and solders for those metals melt in even higher temperatures.
To an untrained eye this diamond will appear to be white, to have no flaws they can see and will be a decent size, without being huge. My maternal family are a large manufacturing jewellery company in Sydney, and this is the "bread and butter" of the engagement ring trade. This is also the chunk of the diamond market that is most inflated by de Beers, these stones are very, very common.
The paternal side of my family are gem wholesalers who deal in rare and expensive Australian gems, as well as turning those gems into mid to high priced jewellery that is sold to wealthy tourists (mostly Japanese or American). My father is one of a few buyers who is invited to the pink diamond sales that occur at the Argyle diamond mine in Western Australia. The Argyle mine produces an unusually high proportion of coloured stones, mostly the "fancy yellows" mentioned by other posters to the thread, but they also produce something like 90% or more of the worlds pink diamonds, the (small) remainder coming out of Russian mines.
The yearly production of gem quality pink diamonds is still measured in carats, as in "each year we produce 40 - 50 carats of pink diamonds"
Check http://www.argylediamonds.com.au/polished/pinktend er_fr.htm for details (Argyle's website), but here are some sample numbers:
And best if all, deBeers has nothing to do with pinks. It's worth remembering that this single mine is producing about 50,000,000 carats of "normal" diamonds a year in addition to the pink, and its only the cartel that keeps these stones valuable.
Of course, all of that being said, my wife wears a "bread and butter" diamond engagement ring, just under a carat, VS1, G colour, because that's what she wanted :)
I bring it up only because it adds to the erosion of the previously unassailable spot that diamonds have held at the top of the gem marketability pyramid- if you can't even tell that it's a diamond and you're a dealer synthetic diamonds are just one more piece of the changing industry.
me, i think every female science geek in the country, myself included, would get a big thrill out of a lab-grown diamond. It's a rock that wasn't mined or found, but created just for you using modern technology. I know if i buy one for myself- as i never would one of the conflict variety- i'd go for lab-grown and show it off with enthusiasm.
"I'd say 'Have a good time,' but arson is still illegal.
Ser, no offence, but you are very stubborn. Diamond needs minimum 2200 degrees F for the process to get started. I AM a jeweler with diploma and many years of experience in the trade.
So it is nice to have an opinion, but it is better to keep it to yourself if it is uninformed. Why don't you try to google some information, or visit some jewelry shop before you post?
Diamond does change into graphite at a significant rate
at higher temperatures, and above 1,500 degrees Celsius [~2700F], the reaction is quite rapid.
I don't have a clue what temperature diamonds are white-hot at, but that doesn't make my opinion worthless.