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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."

32 of 404 comments (clear)

  1. If diamonds weren't a monopoly by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The price would be a lot lower anyway. They've got tons of em, they just let out a select portion each year.

    1. Re:If diamonds weren't a monopoly by AoT · · Score: 5, Interesting

      wow, and insightful first post.
      and you are so right. A few wars might stop as well if the price wasn't so artificially inflated.

    2. Re:If diamonds weren't a monopoly by km790816 · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Wired had a great article about this in September: The New Diamond Age

      The diamond industry is scared. It's interesting.

      (Check out the cover from this issue...Damn!)

    3. Re:If diamonds weren't a monopoly by RT+Alec · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Old article, from 1982, but quite revealing (I think there was a posting on this to Slashdot a few years back).

      The diamond trade is not only a carefuly controlled monopoly, but the whole idea of diamonds being "rare" and "valuable" is a carefuly crafted (over almost 100 years) con on (mainly) Americans.

    4. Re:If diamonds weren't a monopoly by jmaatta · · Score: 5, Funny

      Open Source diamonds! Yay!

    5. Re:If diamonds weren't a monopoly by 88NoSoup4U88 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Or we could also save $4000 by not paying such a ridicilous ammount for a crystalline form of carbon.

    6. Re: If diamonds weren't a monopoly by Tassach · · Score: 5, Informative

      The gold industry is not a monopoly; it's a commodity metal available from dozens, if not hundreds, of sources. The vast majority of diamond production & distribution is controlled by a single company -- the DeBeers organization. Also, while the purity (and therefore value) of gold can be easily determined with a chemical test, diamond valuation is very difficult -- even experts can have very different opinions as to the value of a given stone.

      --
      Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
    7. Re:If diamonds weren't a monopoly by CaptBubba · · Score: 5, Insightful
      Think about it... custom gemstones.

      Send a picture of your sweetheart off with $4,000 and in a month or so you'll get back a 3/4 carat diamond the exact same color of her eyes. I have a hard time believing that the fact that it wasn't "natural' would really set somebody off because after all it is still a diamond and not only that, but it is her diamond.

      These people could make a fortune.

    8. Re:If diamonds weren't a monopoly by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny
      so you'll get back a 3/4 carat diamond the exact same color of her eyes

      Considering that most people have brown eyes....
    9. Re:If diamonds weren't a monopoly by stevejsmith · · Score: 5, Interesting
      Miners...UNION!? They employ migrant child labor in South Africa. I doubt that they get so much as a lunch break. In fact, I think the only thing they get in addition to a few pennies a day is a full rectal exam each day after leaving the mine.

      Debeers is one of the most cruel and devious corporations in the world. Their tactics are desicable, yet oh-so-creative. They've successfully stopped Australian and Russian diamonds from being so much as marketed in the United States with these tactics, and I'm sure it'll only take their executives a small amount of time to figure out how to keep these artificial diamonds out of the market.

      You know their slogan, "a diamond is forever"? Yes, forever. Meaning you keep it forever. Meaning you don't sell it. Meaning there is no second-hand market. They really are good at eliminating markets, no?

    10. Re:If diamonds weren't a monopoly by Anarke_Incarnate · · Score: 5, Informative

      Actually, no.
      Blue diamonds are not that rare. Pale yellow diamonds as well as brownish colored diamonds in the K-M range are lower in value. However Fancy Yellow diamonds in the S and higher range are quite expensive.
      Blue diamonds are expensive, but are not as rare as pink or red diamonds. Pinks and reds are orders of magnitude higher in price compared to yellows and blues. As well, do not buy from a vendor who claims they sell "blue/white" diamonds because this has been called a deceptive practice when diamond vendors would sell white diamonds that had blue flourescence that made them appear slightly bluish in hue when in sunlight. Many diamonds exhibit flourescence in many colors. They usually lower the asking price as well. Blue flourescence can be a good thing if it is moderate and does not cause a milky appearance because it can offset a light yellow tone and make it appear a whiter stone.

  2. no dice by maxbang · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.
  3. Possible regulation? by glpierce · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

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    G
    1. Re:Possible regulation? by Chester+K · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

      You can bet that DeBeers will fight until the bitter end to preserve their diamond monopoly.

      Let's hope they lose.

      --

      NO CARRIER
  4. Machine shop changes by jhines · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  5. Time to sell! by incuso · · Score: 5, Funny
    Hey, thankyou for pointing me to this.

    I understand it is time to sell my bag of diamonds before they still have some value :)

    M.

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  6. Re:huh? by wmt · · Score: 5, Informative

    A very high quality one carat diamond can easily run upwards of $10,000. Try pricing one on bluenile.com.

  7. Re:huh? by Ralph+Wiggam · · Score: 5, Informative

    Diamonds are graded on color. A is the clearest and the more yellow pigment there is the farther into the alphabet the color grade. The price falls significantly as you move down the scale. Then you get all the way to Z+ which becomes "fancy yellow" and then the price goes WAY up. The yellow is caused by nitrogen impurities. The diamond manufacturing people can make a lot more per carat if they intentionally put nitrogen into their diamonds.

    -B

  8. Poster doesn't have a girlfriend! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    "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

  9. colored diamonds by b17bmbr · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.
  10. The real money isn't in jewelry by Sycraft-fu · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  11. *YAWN* by m0nkyman · · Score: 5, Informative

    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?

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    ~ a low user id is no indication I have a clue what I'm talking about.
  12. Date of bitter end by tepples · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The bitter end will come in 2023, when Apollo Diamond's U.S. patents on chemical vapor deposition are scheduled to expire.

  13. Re:huh? by JPriest · · Score: 5, Funny
    What is wrong with the people that leave eBay auction feedback anyway?

    Please rate this post as:
    Super wonderful AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA++++ ./ er

    --
    Saying Java is nice because it works on all OS's is like saying that anal sex is nice because it works on all genders.
  14. Re:That's nothing... by presearch · · Score: 5, Funny

    Although comment understand your syntax mangled.

  15. conflict diamonds ... by Punctuated_Equilibri · · Score: 5, Informative

    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'
  16. for more, go to PBS by tloh · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.
  17. Diamonds-Value- Ha! by shubert1966 · · Score: 5, Funny


    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.
  18. I would never buy a diamond by Schemat1c · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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
  19. DeBeers by t0ny · · Score: 5, Funny
    Cool. I can see the headlines now:

    Scientists to DeBeers: FUCK YOU!!!

    --

    Manipulate the moderator system! Mod someone as "overrated" today.

  20. thats just silly, by pablo_max · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  21. Other information about Diamonds by tres3 · · Score: 5, Informative
    There was a good story in Wired about synthetic diamonds not to long ago. It was discussed on Slashdot too. Where diamonds are going to be interesting in the future is when they displace silicon in chip manufacturing. A diamond chip can operate at temperatures that would turn silicon into a puddle in the bottom of your machine. If Moore's law is to continue, and faster chips = hotter chips, then silicon is going to have to be replaced. The eetimes has an interesting article about a diamond semiconductor, verified by NTT, that operates at 81GHz or 81,000MHz! Another one of diamonds benefits is its high thermal conductivity.

    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.