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."

Comments

Astronomers discover diamond asteroid

[TerraFORM]

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

Re:Possible regulation?

[sketerpot]

Perhaps, but here's how I would go about it if I were evil and powerful: I would make large contributions to various politicians, and let them know that, in order to protect the consumer, it was in everybody's best interest to require regulation of the counterfeit diamond industry. After all, would you want to buy a diamond only to discover that it was a fake? And your wife, if she found out, would get a divorce! Yes, it's true: diamonds trap women's souls!

It is of the utmost importance, I say utmost importance, that we regulate the diamond industry so that distribution is kept in the hands of reputable sellers rather than being flooded by unstable counterfeiters! And if you don't support it, I'll cut off some of your reelection funding!

Re:If diamonds weren't a monopoly

[dealsites]

Here is another terrific article from Wired:

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.09/diamond.h tml


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One hell of a markup

[adrianbaugh]

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.