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A Step Toward the Diamond Age
An anonymous reader writes "Carnegie Institution researchers have learned to produce 10-carat, half-inch thick diamonds at rates of about 100 micrometers per hour, which in the diamond biz is blazingly fast. And these aren't cruddy, yellow diamonds either, but gem-quality stones. The goal: A 300 carat beast in whatever shape they want."
Pictures and the press release.
main(c,r){for(r=32;r;) printf(++c>31?c=!r--,"\n":c<r?" ":~c&r?" `":" #");}
Diamonds really do last forever.
Eventually they'll be so common that they'll be pretty much worthless!
Viva la fight against capitalism!
My other processor is big-endian.
And how expensive is that technology ?
Think like a hacker, act like a hacker, but never become a hacker !
Do you want to bet how long it will take for a certain criminal, monopolistic, little-african-children abusing cartel to have the research grants revoked, and if that fails, to have an accident happen to the scientists in question?
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
I thought yellow diamonds (depending on their exact colour) could be worth much more than normal ones. At least, that's what the Antiques Roadshow said on Sunday...
e.g. http://www.yellowdiamonds.co.uk/
- Oliver
The right to bear arms is only slightly less stupid than the right to arm bears...
A diamond expert worth his wages could tell the difference. I have seen it on a Discovery Channel documentary. There was no reason, the tests all came back positive. He just knew.
A large part of a diamond's appeal is that something so stunningly beautiful was formed naturally. We can produce pretty, sparkly stones, but they can never be as beautiful simply because we produced them.
Not everything can be mass produced.
Unfortunately, I am not Wil Wheaton
Some of us could finally get lucky.
You have been eaten by a Hurd of GNU.
now my wife can spend all my money.
We can finally end world hunger with an ampel supply of artifical carrots for everyone!
- python_kiss
High-Pressure Diamond-Anvil Cell Center at the NSLS
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Come on !. Think about it. They're precious because they are rare, exclusive and pretty much a freak of nature - clear diamonds more so still (probability, my dear watson).
If this will end up producing indistinguishable diamonds , then the market will collapse. IIRC, the artificial rubies made always contain a peice of metal embedded to make sure they are not sold as the real one - it's a question of business ethics for the people who make them (also good old plain advertisement).
To quote Scott Adams: if rabbits were rare and endagered, we'd be buying rabbit shit necklaces for our girlfriends.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur
You can get a girl's best friend that much faster and cheaper. ...wonder how long until they start selling 'em..."Here, dear, how about a nice big rock for you?" ...wonder if that'll get me anywhere...
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure dome decree
Is an original oil painting more beautiful than a copy? No, it's the same picture. But the value of the original is higher. The difference in value comes from the possibility of detecting the uniqueness of the original. If the copy was a true identical copy, their values would also be identical.
This could bring a lot of business to companies like Toys in Babeland...
The diamond market is strictly controlled to keep prices artificially high. It is safe to assume such people would whatever it takes to maintain this control.
Now I can etch invitations to the time travellers convention and know that they'll last.
Don't go to a brothel if you want to buy broth
Now waiting for nanotubes produced at that rate. Most likely such diamonds will be common by-products of failures at production of nanotubes...
Anagram("United States of America") == "Dine out, taste a Mac, fries"
The irony is that Yellow Diamonds are the most valuable.
:P Think about sulpher 8 and carbon 6 Duh how likely is that :P
This poster is really dumb
This is all based off a Russian Technology from the Cold War...
As to the artificially inflated price, it's worse than you think. First off there is a cartel controlling the massive amounts of diamonds pouring out of Africa they have agreements to ensure that the diamonds pass through many many hands between the native workers and the consumer. And the conditions are deplorable.
With the availability of high quality artificial diamonds, we could stop diamond mining. Unfortunately, the diamond mining industries are trying to perpuate their expensive and destructive extraction business by trying to create a special mystique around "natural" diamonds.
So, be aware that the high price you pay for a "natural" diamond is a direct result of the rather unnatural destruction of the environment, together with monopolistic prices charged by the diamond cartels. There are better ways to say "I love you" to someone.
Gonna make me a "glass" house, and then I'm gonna throw me some STONES, oh, yeah.
I saw a documentary on TV last year about a firm that is now 'growing' diamonds - sounded similar to this. Anyway, they were growing them at an incredible rate and they were completely flawless (although i don't know that they were able to specify a size).
On the show, they also talked to a rep from De Beers and a diamond merchant. They basically said that the grown diamonds were almost too good. Despite being a bibt worried about it, they seemed like they would adapt to the new environment. De Beers marketing strategy against something like that would be to promote the classical beauty of natural diamonds, or something like that - basically, advertise the 'snob' value of classically mined diamonds, even if they are less perfect.
On a separate note, I am looking forward to advances in Teflon.
I remember Dr Karl Kruszelnicki (Australians would know who he is) talking at my High School during our final year. Someone posed the old favourite question, "if nothing sticks to teflon, how come it sticks to the frying pan?". Apart from his answer, he did one of his trade-mark tangential replies and said that teflon is soft and therefore scracthes easily, but if you could combine teflon with diamonds, then you'd have a surface that nothing sticks to and that wouldn't scrartch. Of course, diamonds are too expensive for that.
So, with the rise of grown diamonds, I look forward to many advances in easy to use cooking gear.
Thank you for your time.
Its amusing that people are automatically assuming that mass producing diamonds would make the diamond market collapse. While it certainly is a possibility it is highly unlikely due to the following reasons. 1) DeBeers can launch a new marketing ploy and sell their diamonds as naturally forming diamonds compared with man-made diamonds. They could have a larger range of diamonds and infact increase their revenue potential, by charging a higher premium on naturally occuring diamonds. Think of it as a comparision between driving a toyota and a bmw. Toyota for the masses and bmw for the clients who can afford that level of a machine. 2) All tin foil hat conspiracies aside, jewellery is not the only area where diamonds are used so extensively. While it is the most talked about and marketed, diamonds have significant number of uses in industry that such a cheap form of making diamonds would accomodate. 3) Imagine the industries this is going to spawn. Right now they have technology to do laser cutting or painting your picture into glass. Imagine doing the same with a diamond. Debeers will survive, as they will adjust their business model to accomodate this.
That every 18 months the maximum growable size of an artificial diamond will double.
--A La Moore's Law
The best planning can be done after the project completes.
Slashdotters who regularly vent their anger at Micro$oft's monopoly should read about the diamond industry, monopoly and de Beers.
Unlke MS, the diamond trade costs lives. Sierra Leone, Libera and other West African countries are in ruins because of conflict diamonds. A good book is Blood Diamonds which tells the story of how gems destroyed Sierra Leone.
So, roll on artifical gems I say.
Backward%20compatibility%20is%20over-rated
Won't this massively devalue diamonds? Simple supply and demand...
Probably not, new ways of making near perfect diamonds come out nearly as often as aids cures. Some of the fabricated gems get onto the market and some of the methods of creating them are hard to distinguish from natural diamonds. But they mostly stick to the industrial uses they're designed for. I don't think the jewelry value of diamonds is going to plunge any time soon.
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
I remember reading about this a while back in an old issue of Wired magazine. They said that once artificial diamonds become cheap enough, they'll replace silicon in high-end processors because of the thermal conductivity. Diamonds apparently would make much better bases to build chips on than silicon does today.
THE DIAMOND INVENTION
I think I saw a documentary at Discovery Channel about some Russian company that already produces the machines for some years (could be this company). According to the show the traditional diamond industry was so worried that they developed an expensive laser system to discriminate the artificial ones from the natural ones. They could then issue a certificate of 'garanteed blood money' (TM). As a hollywood star/gangsta rapper you of course want to make sure that your hard earned money is well spent on some evil warlord somewhere in Africa.
karma police: arrest this man, he talks in maths; he buzzes like a fridge, he's like a detuned radio. [radiohead]
To Quote
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur
Real natural diamonds have natural flaws. These don't.
As for me, if a girl requires a natural diamond for my hand in marriage then she can keep walking. True love is worth more than all the diamonds in the world.
It figures... 3 months after I choke on the cost of a rock for my fiancee they release a diamond the size of her head... is there anything these days that doesn't go obsolete?
Next you'll be telling me my new computer is obsolete.
There's always something biger, faster, more sparkly.
I would rather be ashes than dust!
The yellow diamonds that are being referred to in this context are not the fancy and sought-after "canary" variety; they're diamonds with certain impurities in the carbon that give them a yellowish or brownish tint, instead of the clear "white" that is deemed so valuable.
Here's a page with a photo about halfway down that will give you an idea. Another page from the same site shows the various grades of colorless-ness.
A true fancy diamond of any color doesn't fall under these grading systems, obviously. The difference in intensity between the muted yellow-brown of a 'Z' color and a true canary-yellow is like the difference between a glowstick and a krypton-bulb flashlight. See here for some examples of blue, canary, pink, and peach diamonds. (No greens, though; and they're my favorite.)
And for the record: Yes, I Am A Jeweler.
Doing my level best to piss off the religious right wing...
sorry can anyone confirm if msn is down?
The two main causes were:
1. Teddy Kennedy not wearing one on TV
2. The car and its low ceiling.
So to come all the way back to Diamonds, we would need:
1. Brittney Spears' fourth husband gives her a Modern Diamond.
2. Semiconducting and coating technologies.
Give it time, it will happen. As an adjunct, what will help 1. is that now humans will be in control of the fabrication process, instead of tectonic movements. So potentially we'll be able to fabricate pink, yellow, chartruse diamonds as well. If your fiancee asks for a leopard print diamond ring, run.
[% slash_sig_val.text %]
This is impressive. Their diamond is transparent from infrared to ultraviolet.
In a few years we will probably be able to buy diamond Prescription eyeglasses and diamond sunglasses.
Lurking is an art. If you can read this then I have not yet mastered it.
Read this. Mikimoto changed the face of the pearl market with his technique of culturing pearls.
So potentially, the diamond market also could be changed.
The one compay I know that claims to produce clear diamonds, using vapor deposition is Apollo. But the company is pretty secretive and basically no one had a chance to evaluate the claims. Apparently they're still growing a diamond seeding plate with a large enough diameter to make the process commercially viable.
"10-carat, half-inch thick diamonds at rates of about 100 micrometers per hour."
This characterization will, no doubt, be oft-repeated. But what does it mean? I have no clue.
"Carat" is a measure of weight. Weight is proportional to volume. Volume has 3 dimensions. One of the dimensions is, presumably, 1/2 inch. One of the dimensions is growing at 100 micrometers per hour. What's the 3rd dimension?
Or are all three dimensions growing at 100 uM/h? That would make the diamond a sphere. Not a bad approximation for the shape of a crystal, I suppose. But a 1/2-inch sphere would weigh a bunch more than 10 carats. (A carat is 0.20 mg and the specific gravity of diamond is about 3).
The statement is gibberish to me.
Ok... so how long before they can extrude a diamond long enough to build A C Clarkes space elevator? I am going to buy shares in these guys right now!
That's great, because by the time the average /. user starts looking for one, diamonds might be a dime a dozen...
eTrade SUCKS
POOF!
at the end of 2100 (3rd in the series of 2001[which was a short story actually] and 2010), it turns out that one of the moons of jupiter is covered in ... diamonds. the epilogue of the book describes a world where diamonds are as plentiful as dirt, and they are used in completely mundane ways like as a building material.
i thought that was a fascinating thought - if diamonds were as cheap as cement, imagine how many ways you could use the hardest known substance in the world...
if anyone tells my girlfriend, they'll die a slow and horrible death.
Free as in mason.
Did the De Beers cartel brainwash you so much that you think diamonds monoploised by de Beers are worth more than perfect lab grown ones? You must like MS a lot then, it has a lot of natural flaws in its products too.
For me, diamonds mean very lttle, but for the tech industry I suppose prefect grown crystals are very desirable. How long till we heve the first processor on a diamond chip?
This space is intentionally staring blankly at you
Apart from the new technological possibilities offered by cheap diamonds, there are significant positive social implications as well. Maybe some day the bloody diamond-money funded wars will be over. Another big social innovative thing will be cheap and clean hydrogen energy. But who knows what de Beers and the oil corporations have up their sleeves that will screw us all (well, mainly those in Africa and in the middle-east).
I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie... (P.G. Wodehouse)
Wired had this story on artificial diamonds a while back - The New Diamond Age.
There are bigger dogs out there. The Navy and Airforce come to mind. DeBeers does not want to tangle with research into artificial diamonds. Make the wrong move they'll find themselves down in the business end of a kimberlite pipe two eons out from becoming an inclusion.
300 carat Penguin then?
When shit hits the fan get some of these https://youtu.be/pY-GncsZ-UE
You call that a diamond?
This is a diamond.
We all know diamonds conduct heat uber well so how long before we can have a diamond heatsink, you know case moders dream of these things ;).
here on Slashdot and I'm not going to go back and find the links for you, but the bottom line was that there's no real interest in diamonds for CPUs at this time even though they are already becoming available in a form useable by the semiconductor industry.
The interest in diamonds semiconductors is in high energy applications and specifically power amplifiers. Think along the lines of a low cost 10KW class D home theater amp in a package that is almost all heat sink. There are many other possibilities, but they're in the form of high capacity amplifiers rather than CPUs.
Some of you already know what carbon sequestration is. For the rest, there's Google.
Unlike some other forms of carbon sequestration, where you have the possibility of catastrophic release of the sequestered carbon, diamonds would be essentially permanent.
Yeah, not too practical, even with this advance. But who knows how far it will go? Maybe we could stop global warming and fix the potholes in the roads for good.
All funny/paranoia jokes aside, people that get in the way of DeBeers have a way of sudden financial ruin or disappearing. They actively and dilligently seek out and buy or destroy technologies to artificially create gem quality diamonds. Researchers in this field have every reason to be concerned about their security. Scary stuff. Wired did a great article on this very thing a few years ago.
lady.
Seriously, I've been reading this inexpensive diamond crap for years. Try purchasing one though? All those articles about $200-$400/carat perfect man-made diamonds? They are not available. No one has them at any price short of natural stone $. All that crap from deBeers about 'natural' stones, you think the man-mades would be out there?
I will greatly appreciate some pointers as to where to buy. Out 25th wedding anniversary is coming up and since she lets me play while she works, I really need something WOWING or I'm gonna be in the dog house for a year.
man made diamond dog bowls and collars?
Not Free SF Reader
Hi honey, this frying pan has tons more carats than that ring you wanted!
(duck, and hope your diamond reinforced kevlar helmet works)
Not Free SF Reader
Debeers will survive, as they will adjust their business model to accomodate this.
Let me get this straight.. DeBeers will survive because they will adjust their business model? If they follow our favorite poster children for business model obviated by technology, they'll claim buying created diamonds is stealing, sue anyone wearing created diamonds, and legislate a ban on creating diamonds, despite a multitude of non-infringing uses, as any created diamond can be used for jewelry. Then, they'll introduce the "Diamond Plus" created diamond, with lots of crap visibly included in it making it worthless for jewelry, impairing durability for industrial uses, and deteriorating the heat transfer abilities. Because "Diamond Plus" is blessed by DeBeers though, it's the only thing most people can buy.
The truth about Scientology, Xenu, and you: Operation Clambake
I work for CVD Diamond company and we already produce fake diamond but only for industrial purposes because if we were to make gem quality diamonds DeBeers would just drop the prices and we would be out of bussiness. Right we consetrating on cutting tools.
So does this mean we're getting closer to having affordable diamond heat sinks?
It's gonna be just like Donald Sutherland in Invasion of the Body Snatchers, when the last fool you thought had bought into such idiotic corporate drivel points at you and screams, "DeBeers".
Man made beer is better than natural beer.
Man made bread is better than natural bread.
Man made acid is better than ergot extract.
Man made shoes are better than tying dead possums to you feet with some mulberry bark.
Heat it up, though, and it will burn. Heat it in anoxic environment & you'll get crusty black stuff.
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, it doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick
So, when will they deploy the first feeder networks? And when will MCs appear on eBay?
And do I have to refer to my TV, stereo and computer monitor as "mediatrons" now?
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
Look, the reason diamonds are valuable is that they have a perceived value among the general populace. Similar to paper money's real value set by the money market. Among those in the general populace are women and you show your appreciation for a woman by spending your means on her. The easiest way for a woman to proudly show her value in your eyes is to wear a N-carat diamond (where N is at least in the 95th percentile of the affordability of your social group). Sure, it may make more since to you to give her something of actual value but who would understand the value of a Moon rock hanging around her neck? No, it is the perceived, commonly attributed value of the diamond that makes it so valuable.
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
you utter moron
Previous discussion here with CDAC
0 8/1931236
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/10/
I don't have the link to my previous slashdot post that talked about their previous attempts... but I gotta tell ya I'm surprised they've made so much progress in so little time.
Thin glass pane also conducts significantly. In colder countries double or even triple pane windows are used and it is the air (or sometimes even vacuum) that is a good insulator and it would work with diamond panes as well.
I doubt diamond will ever be as cheap as glass, though
Save the bandwidth. Don't use sigs!
Can anybody point out a rebuttal on this teflon information, looks too scary to be true.
Do you have any idea how much a yellow diamond is worth? Obviously not!
Then someone called the SCO Diamond mines would sue for copyright infringement, and then release all diamonds with DRM, make the production of diamonds illegal.
Well this will ruffle de-beers feathers, I always hated diamonds. Stupid carbon.
I hope they release a USB version, with carbon dust, and in 10 years, people have diamong ashrays.
Except smoking is for wusses.
#hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
Are artificial diamonds already used for industrial purposes? And if not, can this new technique be applied to that?
Every time I buy a diamond-tipped saw blade I wonder if I'm helping deplete the worlds supply of diamonds, and helping perpetuate the DeBeers cartel...
"What kind of music do pirates listen to?" -Paul Maud'dib
"Yeeeaaarrrrr n' Bee!!" -Stilgar, Leader of Sietch Tabr
Thermal fluctuations can give enough activation energy but they are extremely rare at room temperature. So it's true it's a terribly slow process in room temperature but "forever" can take care of it. Diamond is thermodynamically unstable and it is enough.
Save the bandwidth. Don't use sigs!
More on this - Epstein wrote what's now considered to be the "classic" expose of the whole De Beers / diamonds racket for The Atlantic Monthly back in 1982.
n d1.htm
It's in 3 parts - here's a link - http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/82feb/8202diamo
NOTE ----- You'll either need to subscribe or chamge your useragent to Google (or whatever).
HAVE YOU EVER TRIED TO SELL A DIAMOND?
An unruly market may undo the work of a giant cartel and of an inspired, decades-long ad campaign
by Edward Jay Epstein
(The online version of this article appears in three parts. Click here to go to part two. http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/82feb/8202diamon d2.htm> Click here to go to part three. http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/82feb/8202diamon d3.htm>)
THE diamond invention -- the creation of the idea that diamonds are rare and valuable, and are essential signs of esteem -- is a relatively recent development in the history of the diamond trade. Until the late nineteenth century, diamonds were found only in a few riverbeds in India and in the jungles of Brazil, and the entire world production of gem diamonds amounted to a few pounds a year. In 1870, however, huge diamond mines were discovered near the Orange River, in South Africa, where diamonds were soon being scooped out by the ton. Suddenly, the market was deluged with diamonds. The British financiers who had organized the South African mines quickly realized that their investment was endangered; diamonds had little intrinsic value -- and their price depended almost entirely on their scarcity. The financiers feared that when new mines were developed in South Africa, diamonds would become at best only semiprecious gems.
The major investors in the diamond mines realized that they had no alternative but to merge their interests into a single entity that would be powerful enough to control production and perpetuate the illusion of scarcity of diamonds. The instrument they created, in 1888, was called De Beers Consolidated Mines, Ltd., incorporated in South Africa. As De Beers took control of all aspects of the world diamond trade, it assumed many forms. In London, it operated under the innocuous name of the Diamond Trading Company. In Israel, it was known as "The Syndicate." In Europe, it was called the "C.S.O." -- initials referring to the Central Selling Organization, which was an arm of the Diamond Trading Company. And in black Africa, it disguised its South African origins under subsidiaries with names like Diamond Development Corporation and Mining Services, Inc. At its height -- for most of this century -- it not only either directly owned or controlled all the diamond mines in southern Africa but also owned diamond trading companies in England, Portugal, Israel, Belgium, Holland, and Switzerland.
De Beers proved to be the most successful cartel arrangement in the annals of modern commerce. While other commodities, such as gold, silver, copper, rubber, and grains, fluctuated wildly in response to economic conditions, diamonds have continued, with few exceptions, to advance upward in price every year since the Depression. Indeed, the cartel seemed so superbly in control of prices -- and unassailable -- that, in the late 1970s, even speculators began buying diamonds as a guard against the vagaries of inflation and recession.
The diamond invention is far more than a monopoly for fixing diamond prices; it is a mechanism for converting tiny crystals of carbon into universally recognized tokens of wealth, power, and romance. To achieve this goal, De Beers had to control demand as well as supply. Both women and men had to be made to perceive diamonds not as marketable precious stones but as an inseparable part of courtship and married life. To stabilize the market, De Beers had to endow these stones with a sentiment that would inhibit the public from ever reselling them. The illusion had to be created that diamonds were forever -- "forever" in the sense that they should never be resold.
In September of 1938, Harry Oppenheimer, son of the founder of De Beers and then twenty-nine, traveled from Johannesburg to New York City, to meet with Gerold M. Lauck, the president of N. W. Ayer, a leading advertising agency in the United States. Lauck and N. W. Ayer had been recommended to Oppenheimer by the Morgan Bank, which had helped his father con
As a wedding jewel, a "natural" diamond represents the long process two people go through in their relationship. Maybe these new diamonds represent the new kind of relationship between people: "Diamond Age: Get married now! It's cheap, and over before you know it!"
THE diamond market had to be further restructured in the mid-1960s to accomodate a surfeit of minute diamonds, which De Beers undertook to market for the Soviets. They had discovered diamond mines in Siberia, after intensive exploration, in the late 1950s: De Beers and its allies no longer controlled the diamond supply, and realized that open competition with the Soviets would inevitably lead, as Harry Oppenheimer gingerly put it, to "price fluctuations,"which would weaken the carefully cultivated confidence of the public in the value of diamonds. Oppenheimer, assuming that neither party could afford risking the destruction of the diamond invention, offered the Soviets a straightforward deal -- "a single channel" for controlling the world supply of diamonds. In accepting this arrangement, the Soviets became partners in the cartel, and co-protectors of the diamond invention.
.28 of a carat in 1976, which coincided almost exactly with the average size of the Siberian diamonds De Beers was distributing. However, as American consumers became accustomed to the idea of buying smaller diamonds, they began to perceive larger diamonds as ostentatious. By the mid-1970s, the advertising campaign for smaller diamonds was beginning to seem too successful. In its 1978 strategy report, N. W. Ayer said, "a supply problem has developed ... that has had a significant effect on diamond pricing" -- a problem caused by the long-term campaign to stimulate the sale of small diamonds. "Owing to successful pricing, distribution and advertising policies over the last 16 years, demand for small diamonds now appears to have significantly exceeded supply even though supply, in absolute terms, has been increasing steadily." Whereas there was not a sufficient supply of small diamonds to meet the demands of consumers, N. W. Ayer reported that "large stone sales (1 carat and up) ... have maintained the sluggish pace of the last three years." Because of this, the memorandum continued, "large stones are being .. discounted by as much as 20%."
Almost all of the Soviet diamonds were under half a carat in their uncut form, and there was no ready retail outlet for millions of such tiny diamonds. When it made its secret deal with the Soviet Union, De Beers had expected production from the Siberian mines to decrease gradually. Instead, production accelerated at an incredible pace, and De Beers was forced to reconsider its sales strategy. De Beers ordered N. W. Ayer to reverse one of its themes: women were no longer to be led to equate the status and emotional commitment to an engagement with the sheer size of the diamond. A "strategy for small diamond sales" was outlined, stressing the "importance of quality, color and cut" over size. Pictures of "one quarter carat" rings would replace pictures of "up to 2 carat" rings. Moreover, the advertising agency began in its international campaign to "illustrate gems as small as one-tenth of a carat and give them the same emotional importance as larger stones." The news releases also made clear that women should think of diamonds, regardless of size, as objects of perfection: a small diamond could be as perfect as a large diamond.
DeBeers devised the "eternity ring," made up of as many as twenty-five tiny Soviet diamonds, which could be sold to an entirely new market of older married women. The advertising campaign was based on the theme of recaptured love. Again, sentiments were born out of necessity: older American women received a ring of miniature diamonds because of the needs of a South African corporation to accommodate the Soviet Union.
The new campaign met with considerable success. The average size of diamonds sold fell from one carat in 1939 to
The shortage of small diamonds proved temporary. As Soviet diamonds continued to flow into London at an ever-increasing rate, De Beers's strategists came to the conclusion that this production could not be entirely absorbed by "eternity rings" or other new concepts in
I could grow a diamond around my girl's finger and she would never be able to take it off!!!
Ruby Neural Evolution of Augmenting Topologies
They are not the starter in the "synthetic diamonds" area.
Just for information, Lifegems have been offering the service to create diamonds from the body of your dead family members and/or pets.
Also, just so you know, Synthethic diamonds are worth much less then their original fellows. They are easy to recognize by their flawlessness.
I wouldn't mind you in my head, if you weren't so clearly mad -Lews Therin Telamon
A serious threat to the Stability of the diamond invention came in the late 1970s from the sale of "investment" diamonds to speculators in the United States. A large number of fraudulent investment firms, most of them in Arizona, began telephoning prospective clients drawn from various lists of professionals and investors who had recently sold stock. "Boiler-room operators," many of them former radio and television announcers, persuaded strangers to buy mail-order diamonds as investments that were supposedly much safer than stocks or bonds. Many of the newly created firms also held "diamond-investment seminars" in expensive resort hotels, where they presented impressive graphs and data. Typically assisted by a few well-rehearsed shills in the audience, the seminar leaders sold sealed packets of diamonds to the audience. The leaders often played on the fear of elderly investors that their relatives might try to seize their cash assets and commit them to nursing homes. They suggested that the investors could stymie such attempts by putting their money into diamonds and hiding them. The sealed packets distributed at these seminars and through the mail included certificates guaranteeing the quality of the diamonds -- as long as the packets remained sealed. Customers who broke the seal often learned from independent appraisers that their diamonds were of a quality inferior to that stated. Many were worthless. Complaints proliferated so fast that, in 1978, the attorney general of New York created a "diamond task force" to investigate the hundreds of allegations of fraud. Some of the entrepreneurs were relative newcomers to the diamond business. Rayburne Martin, who went from De Beers Diamond Investments, Ltd. (no relation to the De Beers cartel) to Tel-Aviv Diamond Investments, Ltd. -- both in Scottsdale, Arizona -- had a record of embezzlement and securities law violations in Arkansas, and was a fugitive from justice during most of his tenure in the diamond trade. Harold S. McClintock, also known as Harold Sager, had been convicted of stock fraud in Chicago and involved in a silver-bullion-selling caper in 1974 before he helped organize DeBeers Diamond Investments, Ltd. Don Jay Shure, who arranged to set up another DeBeers Diamond Investments, Ltd., in Irvine, California, had also formerly been convicted of fraud. Bernhard Dohrmann, the "marketing director" of the International Diamond Corporation, had served time in jail for security fraud in 1976. Donald Nixon, the nephew of former President Richard M. Nixon, and fugitive financier Robert L. Vesco were, according to the New York State attorney general, participating in the late 1970s in a high-pressure telephone campaign to sell "overvalued or worthless diamonds" by employing "a battery of silken-voiced radio and television announcers." Among the diamond salesmen were also a wide array of former commodity and stock brokers who specialized in attempting to sell sealed diamonds to pension funds and retirement plans. In London, the real De Beers, unable to stifle all the bogus entrepreneurs using its name, decided to explore the potential market for investment gems. It announced in March of 1978 a highly unusual sort of "diamond fellowship" for selected retail jewelers. Each jeweler who participated would pay a $2,000 fellowship fee. In return, he would receive a set of certificates for investment-grade diamonds, contractual forms for "buy-back" guarantees, promotional material, and training in how to sell these unmounted diamonds to an entirely new category of customers. The selected retailers would then sell loose stones rather than fine jewels, with certificates guaranteeing their value at $4,000 to $6,000. De Beers's modest move into the investment-diamond business caused a tremor of concern in the trade. De Beers had always strongly opposed retailers selling "investment" diamonds, on the grounds that because customers had no sentimental attachment to such diamonds, they would eventually attempt to resell them and cause sharp price fluctuations. If De Beers had change
My last record needle I bought was dimond tipped. Now I can get them cheaper!.. oh wait..that purchase was 20 years ago.
.
for those that think that its stupid to run a diamond across a plastic record
http://needleexpress.com/faq.htm
lifegem is a company (no affiliation with me btw) that will create a diamond from the ashes of deceased relatives. personally i think its a pretty cool way to go. of course if humans are still on this rock millions of years from now it could be a nasty form of pollution.
872835240
As for me, if a girl requires a natural diamond for my hand in marriage then she can keep walking. True love is worth more than all the diamonds in the world.
Absolutely right. Any woman who would put her own shiny status symbol ahead of the unethical consiquences and bad economics of buying a diamond (they have no resale value, and the amount of human suffering the DeBeers monopoly has created around the world makes buying a gem from that cartel orders of magnitude more destructive and unethical than buying truckloads of heroin from the Taliban) is a toxic, amoral, uncairing bitch from which you should run like the wind, not walk.
Thankfully, my wife felt exactly the same way--so we went with simple, white-gold bands that go well with her silver and platinum jewelry (sans diamonds), and spent the money on new laptops and a rockin' honeymoon.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
a "good" natural diamond, which won't glow, and a "bad" manufactured diamond, which is "too perfect".
Natural diamonds can be blood diamonds. Cultured diamonds aren't. How does this make natural diamonds "better" than cultured diamonds?
You are using very bad case studies. The better examples are what happened to ruby and pearl markets after techniques for making artificial and indistinguishable ones flooded the market. Rubies were once more expensive than diamonds and a wealthy dowager sold her Manhattan property in the 20's for a string of pearls.
Yeah - the price will drop - a lot - in spite of the marketing techniques that you mention...
As you're a geek jeweler, I'm curious as to whether you're keeping an eye on the synthetic diamonds that are coming out. When my fiance and I were looking for an engagement ring, he was actually, literally screamed at for looking for a gemesis stone. (We think they're really cool, and a hell of a lot more desirable than the kind that come out of the ground.) We ended up not getting one because he wanted to deal with someone local and because both yellow and orange do /not/ go with my skin tone.
All of this is a rambly way of asking whether you've seen synthetic blue diamonds coming out yet... We weren't able to get any before, despite quite a lot of trying, which was a real shame.
Lea
On my wife's finger is my from my grandma's ashes..
The article doesn't mention it but I'm assuming the researchers have patents on their process. If that is the case, having a patent is roughly analagous (from a strategic supply standpoint - not an evil business methods standpoint) to owning a mine for about 20 years without actually having to dig up rock. They can still control production and quantity and no one else can produce diamonds without their permission. And it has the advantage of generating a more predictable product. There is some risk that someone might circumvent the process described in the patent in a location which does not respect US patents. They'd have to be careful about exactly what technology they patent and what is kept as a trade secret.
The patent holders could opt for roughly the status quo and just sell into the current system without flooding the market. They could enjoy the artificially high margins that diamonds currently enjoy. If they are interested in the jewlery business, they would have strong incentive to not rock the boat too hard. Diamonds are valuable due to their scarcity (real/artificial) and some smart marketing.
Artificial Rubys and Sapphires have been on the market for years and it is still painful to find a quality artifial sapphire. I mean with a nice cut, calibrated, that has been carefully choosen for its beauty.
Even if you can create the most incredible stone for a fraction of the price. The market still maximise their profit using the best technique only on the most expensive stones ( the natural ones ). Artificial stone are only used for entry level jewellery were everything is done to lower the price.
For the artificial diamond I won't get any better: cutting a diamond is extremly expensive, diamonds worn out everything and if you don't do it properly they just look very similar to glass.
The question will be : is there a market for a 2000$ artificial diamond ring ( in every point equivalent natural diamond ring that would worth 50.000$+ )
Or the jeweller will keep artificial diamond for the entry market GOLD ring + 10 mm VERY LARGE DIAMOND only 20$ even if it looks like a plastic chunk on a brass keyring.
would you pay more for a flower rown in the rainforest, over the same species grown in a greenhouse? No...because they are identical in every way....
Yes, there is a cartel and they shat themselves when Australia started developing the mother of all diamiond mines back in the 80's. They used the huge concentrated deposits to cut a "deal" with De-beers that gave the local natives sweet fuck all.
Plenty of stats on google: The Argyle diamond mine is the largest producer of diamonds on the planet, ~25% of world output by weight, the other big player is Russia. The mine is very hi-tech, so it means they run the mine with of about 125 well paid employees per shift. About 95% of thier output is sold as industrial diamonds. Apparently pink and green make up only a fraction of a percent of all diamonds and are the most sought after.
The Argyle mine produces ~95% of the worlds pink diamonds. A quick calculation gives a figure of about 3-5 thousand tons of crushed rock per carrat of pink diamonds. Even without economic slavery, it's still a fucking big hole in the bush and a shit load of fossil fuels for something that can be whipped up in a lab.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
I can finally get that diamond sword and diamond full plate armor. W000T!
Now if I could only lose an extra 70 lbs and KEEP it off I could ensure that I always fit into my diamond full plate.
I mod down so you can mod up. Your welcome.
Ever try to sell a diamond? It's basically impossible (or at least, you can't expect to get more than about 20% of it's *cough* "value").
- ever-tried-to-sell-diamond.html
http://www.princeton.edu/~amoroz/2004/11/have-you
When you buy a diamond, you're essentially buying it from DeBeers. They control the diamond market. Jewlery stores, though, don't buy diamonds from DeBeers, they sell them on commission, and can return anything they don't sell.
So, quite aside from the fact that diamonds are, at best, semi-precious in terms of rarity, in order for a jewler to buy your diamond, if they wanted to pay "market price", they'd have to pay you considerably more than they'd pay DeBeers for the same quality diamond, and they'd have to take a risk that they wouldn't have to take buying a diamond from DeBeers (what if your diamond doesn't sell?). Neither is attractive, so the market for selling diamonds is essentially non-existant.
One of the areas where this stuff will become very useful is rocket engines. High thermal conductivity at a high specific strength is a rocket scientist's classic "unobtanium".
Seastead this.
In other news, Carnegie suddenly vanished in a huge flash. The diamond lab was destroyed along with all hands.
A press release faxed by DeBeers the day before the sudden disappearence denied all knowledge of the incident.
Seriously, you can bet DeBeers is considering all options including dirty tricks to keep their monopoly. Anything like this is a threat to them.
Sig for hire.
I'll put my hand up. You gave my answer in your question in fact: AMD did take on Intel, and they are winning. 15 years ago AMD was a nobody in the CPU market. (They had some nice embedded chips, and they were a source of the 286, but essentially they were a tiny player allowed to exist only because Intel didn't want to go to monopoly court) Today it isn't Intel you have to go against and win, it is Intel andAMD. No reason it can't happen again if someone wants to invest money on designing their own CPU.
VIA is doing just fine in fact, though their goals are not to win as you define it.
Can you imagine how many rainbow layered 3 ct. diamonds would sell for $19.95 with a Britany Spears endorsement? Wow.
Help end the use of Sigs. Tomorrow
Apocryphal, but could be true: I heard that diamonds were no big thing until the 19th century. Queen Victoria of England was touring the colonies, and in South Africa the locals were futzing over what to show her. "India's got tea and silk, we were established for producing slaves... oh, that's no good anymore. We have to show her we're a valuable part of the empire somehow!" So, the locals pumped up the importance of the local gemstones with a PR campaign to make these hard-glass stones hip and cool. When the Queen showed up, her entourage bought it hook, line and sinker.
If true, it's one of the better examples of a 'fad' or engineered need, almost a century before designer jeans.
Honestly, yellow doesn't go with anybody's skin tone. Well, very few. I knew a woman from Ghana once who was so dark she had blue undertones, and yellow would look great on her. Learning to do makeup for her was a trip; I had to throw out everything I'd learned. (I'm a stage director, not a beautician, but close enough.)
So I don't think that yellow stones will sell all that well; the canary stones look better in the case than on your finger or around your neck. They get big points for different and interesting, but that's about all.
Now if they can learn to make synthetic greens...
A real diamond is created out of tramendous pressure, whereby the carbon atoms of coal are just mashed together. This new diamond seems to be grown like a crystal. Surely it can't be very hard.
Wired.com ran an article several months ago about two different firms, one in Central Florida and the other near Boston that were producing perfect, flawless white or colored diamonds.
At the time, there was halting discussion with the deBeers Foundation about how to respond. The article mentioned that the path of "but the minor flaws mean it's a real diamond" was chosen.
As soon as I read this posting I searched the Wired archive for the article. Not found. Clear evidence of a "diamond conspiracy". I'm off for more research and will post again soon.
This post encoded with ROT26. If you can read it, you've violated the DMCA. Handcuffs please, sergeant.
The link to the original article, Diamond Age, is available via the Diamond Age.
We praise our new Google overlords!
This post encoded with ROT26. If you can read it, you've violated the DMCA. Handcuffs please, sergeant.
Word.
Is there any place where I can purchase an artificial or real diamond at a reasonable price?
Have been manufactured for a couple years now:h tml
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.09/diamond.
"In theory, theory and practice are the same; in practice, they are not."
How long will it take for this tech to be available
to the common Schmoe?
I already have visions of designed imperfections...
like say... a green dragon in the middle of a
clear diamond?
How about some type of focusing imperfections??
Anyway.......
Yeah, they are trying to push "lab certified diamonds" at the moment. That won't last as the production of manufactured (or cultured) diamonds ramps up and makes them all worthless other than a pretty stone.
Anyway, opals are far more attractive than diamonds.
Deleted
I saw a green one, once, at the Smithsonian. Harry Winston had sponsored a show with fabulous examples of a diamond of several colors, including red, yellow, orange, and green, to go with the famous blue Hope Diamond. (They also built a new case to for the Hope, which shows it off far better than the old one, which looked like a vault with the door open, the diamond stuffed in the back.)
The green one was truly remarkable. The exhibit notes claimed that it's not due to chemicals mixed in but due to variations in the structure caused by radioactivity, and that most green diamonds (unlike this one) were artificially irradiated.
If so, I see no reason why they couldn't make artificially-green cultured diamonds.
I almost puke when I think about how much I spent for that diamond engagement ring! Seriously. I was really on the fence, but it meant a lot to her, and I suprised her with an artificially-overpriced gem!
I still can't believe that I spent so much of that ring.
I wonder how much CO2 they pump into the atmosphere, from energy consumed and reaction byproducts, for every gram of carbon they sink into a diamond. If the process were efficient enough, solar (directly, or indirectly by biodiesel) might make building durable architecture and devices a way to get ahead of the Greenhouse. Perhaps by building indestructible greenhouses :).
--
make install -not war
With this technology, they could replace the space shuttle's tiles with diamonds.
>Honestly, yellow doesn't go with anybody's skin tone. Well, very few.
I know several people who have pronounced red undertones to their skin, and look incredible in many shades of yellow, especially saffron. I wish I could pull it off!
>Now if they can learn to make synthetic greens...
Well, I looked around, and Gemesis seems to be selling (as in "I can buy them right now") blues and pinks. I wouldn't be surprised if greens were not that long behind.
Me, I'd go for a nice blue... that certainly goes with my skin tone.
Lea
You can still use it as a pencil.
I still don't know the answer to this. Why aren't shaver razor blades coated with diamond, so that they last much longer? Is there some kind of conspiracy between the top manufacturers to prevent this from happening so that they keep selling blades?
Why OpalCalc is the best Windows calc
At ShopliftersTM markets you don't even need the gun.
I refused to buy my wife a diamond ring, on the grounds that the South African diamond monopoly helped perpetuate apartheid. She got cubic zirconia and no-one has ever noticed the difference. Now if I could have just talked her out of that other STUPID tradition -- the big expensive wedding.
With all of the talk of colored diamonds being of less worth, be aware that yellow diamonds are indeed not infrequently found. However the other colors are rarer and can increase the value significantly over a colorless diamond with the same shape and clarity.
This information comes from a good friend of mine in the diamond business for 30 years.
My understanding is that there are one or two companies (the Microsofts of the diamond industry) that have a lock on a huge part of the market. They pretty much set the market rates. When manufactured diamonds are indistinguishable from the real thing, it's likely that an entire empire could tumble. Of course, they could always do what other large orgnizations in danger of being replaced have done- lobby Congress for laws that protect their interests, rather than allowing the market to take care of itself.
and coal is . . .
Exam 4/C again. Maybe I'll do better this time.
I seem to recall reading that diamonds as electrical insulators were extremely efficient. Man-made diamonds could have a drastic effect on the electronics industry if my memory serves me correctly.
Silicon on Diamond, anyone?
there needs to be a self-conradiction mod
Uhhhh yellow diamonds are much rarer, and thus worth big bucks. This is why the guys who make diamonds for jewelery create them.
My wife already insists that any future diamonds she gets must be manmade. She'd prefer wearing something that embodies the peak of human ingenuity and skill
Rado recently introduced the V10K watch, made out of synthetic diamonds. The crystal is still sapphire, so I guess they couldn't get the diamonds to a good optical quality. Also, the band is rubber and a bit garish for a $5k watch. Still, pretty cool for a materialiphile. More pics & review.
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
What I want to know is if we'll be able to burn diamonds on a fire, like coal, once they get cheap enough. That would be really cool.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
(insightful)
Read their Industry scheme for regulation. Note the phrase "Not to buy any diamonds from suspect or unknown sources of supply". That's all about market control.
Before the "Kimberly Process", diamonds were generally bought and sold, even in DeBeers showings, with no indication of origin. So introducing synthetic diamonds into the market was easier. With the "Kimberly Process" in place, it's much tougher.
The diamond industry has been lobbying countries to require that synthetic diamonds be labelled in some way. The term "cultured diamonds" is widely used, but there's litigation in Germany to require some more negative term, like "synthetic".
DeBeers has also developed identification devices, the DiamondSure and the DiamondView to try to sort out synthetic and natural diamonds. The diamonds produced in high-pressure presses can be identified without much trouble. But grown diamonds are tougher to identify.
Long term, diamond prices will probably crash, like sapphire did once you could buy sapphire bar, tube, and rod.
Diamond-shaft bic pen. Also serves as for emergency tracheostomies, or as a really cool straw. You'll never again be embarrassed with broken pens in your pocket.
Everyone is entitled to his own opinions, but not his own facts.
The problem, as you point out, is that the kinetics is slow. Eventually, you'll get over the reaction barrier.
I've always found it ironic that DeBeers' marketing slogan "Diamonds are Forever" is ironically one of the few patently false statements they could have made regarding their chunks of carbon. Diamond doesn't form under normal temperatures and pressures because the planar hexagonal lattic of graphite is much more stable than the three-dimensional tetragonal lattice of diamond. Given sufficient time (on the order of millions of years) diamonds may even revert back to hunks of graphite when kept at normal pressures, because they are only metastable when not under the conditions that make their formation thermodynamically favorable. Hence, ironically, diamonds are in fact "for a really really long time," but claiming that they are "forever" is a lie.
I think they settled for 'Special Diamonds' or something like that.
The most common generic term for these man-made carbon crystals, whether by Gemesis' method or by chemical vapor deposition, is "cultured diamond" by analogy to "cultured pearl".
the first question some women will ask is if it is a "natural" diamond, and will not answer your question until you answer theirs
Answer: "Would you rather have a diamond made especially for you, or would you rather have what could be a blood diamond?" Any woman who doesn't accept the humanitarian argument doesn't deserve to get married to me.
With technology like this avalible, it's still hard to see any sort of effect on the actual market. I've looked around for 'cultured' diamonds, and all I can turn up is http://www.diamondscultured.com and http://www.schubach.com/.
It's surprising how little market impact they've had so far.
The market 'leaders' are usually about as anti capitalst as you can get.
/.ers.
DeBeer's has been written about (google it youself, [there's more that just a little blood in their history,]) while Microsoft's anti-trust activities are well well known to
Both DeBeers & Microsoft have used coercion, collusion and murder. (In Microsoft's I'll give 'em the benefit of the doubt that they didn't know how far the Chinese were going to go against their own software 'pirates.')
They want to be the market, not be subject to market forces.
The only effective remedy is boycotting them and that is not going to happen is it?
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
If these new diamonds are "transparent from infrared to ultraviolet," tell me more about this laser that was used to cut them!
"But all your emitter and collector are belong to me!"
...Is to choose a 'phyle with which to align myself! I've had some enticing offers from the Vickys, but to tell the truth I think I'll be happier with Cryptnet. Now, what to do about those obdurate rednecks, the Fists of Righteous Harmony?
I know they were trying to get a law pushed through that would have required all artificially created diamonds to be laser inscribed with a mark indicating they are artificial. This would naturally have marred the appearance of the diamond.
Someone really SHOULD mod this up. The people who are sheep-like enough to equate diamonds with love are also sheep-like enough to fall for "it's more expensive, therefore it MUST be better" argument.
You, sir/madam, should be in marketing.
ERROR 144 - REBOOT ?
A huge 300 carat penis!
Cartels always have to be maintained by force. Usually some government provides that force, and maintains a cartel via licensing, charter, or regulation. DeBeers just happens to supply its own muscle.
I can't stand to see so many people attribute the evils of mercantilist markets to insufficient government control. They impugn the free market without even realizing that we have never had a free market. And as long as people keep calling for more regulation, we never will.
From
http://www.unc.edu/~rowlett/units/dictC.html
What would be the implication of more diamonds? I've heard of ruby lasers. Are there also diamond lasers?
Is there anything else that mass produced diamonds would be useful for? (Aside from lowering the price of getting hitched =)
"Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us." -Jesus Christ The Lord's Prayer
See, the thing is diamonds were not all that popular 100-150 years ago. DeBeers basically created the market for them. They figured out they needed to market them to men, because they did consumer research that said that women would actually rather have men put that two months worth of wages as a down payment on a house. So they started a campaign that said that men should surprise women with a diamond engagement ring. Before that, couples usually talked about getting married beforehand, the guy didn't just 'pop the question' out of the blue. If guys actually stopped to talk with women about it I think most of them, even today would rather have something more practical. My wife certainly felt that way.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
I haven't seen any synthetic blues yet, but I know that's one of the colors that's being developed, because of the potential uses in optical filters. I'm pretty sure that they'll be available in the next 5 years or so. And when they do, I'm getting one for myself.
Doing my level best to piss off the religious right wing...
And agreed; I'd love to see lab-grown greens become available. All of the color, none of the guilt, and a +5 tech-geek bonus score.
Doing my level best to piss off the religious right wing...
Since you're a jeweler, I was wondering..
Is it true that diamonds have fractional resale value? And if so, why isn't cheap diamond jewelry more widely available? I've searched the ebay and the internet at large, but I haven't found a good source for secondhand stones.
Also, what's your take on moissanite?
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
...because carbon nanotubes are even stronger.
The real value of diamond would be as the chip substrate, instead of silicon. That would give intrinsically higher electron speeds (drift velocities), and intrinsically higher breakdown voltages, and better thermal transport. In short, a better chip, after all the <cough> technical details <cough> are ironed out.
Actually more than that. Silicon, germanium, and diamond all share the same crystal structure as well as the same number of valence electrons per atom. While at room temperature we normally think of diamond as an insulator, at high temperatures it can serve as a high-bandgap semiconductor. It's not the sort of thing you want to build your CPU from, but diamond and silicon carbide are good choices for devices intended to function at high temperatures.
Diamonds aren't made from coal, although some diamonds may recycle carbon that once resided at the Earth's surface. Diamonds are usually carried up from considerable depth in the Earth's mantle by rare volcanic features known as kimberlite pipes (named from the famous Kimberly mine in South Africa). Diamonds may form at depths starting around 150km, but source magmas for kimberlites originate rather deeper, often about 200km.
Isotopic studies of diamonds suggest there are two sources for the carbon that makes up naturual diamonds. Some carbon may be carried to depth during subduction -- the process where geologic plates are recycled in to the mantle, but this is the exception not the rule. Diamonds that crystalized from carbon sourced at the Earth's surface have similar isotopic signatures to eclogite, a rock associated with subduction, and on this basis we can tell them from diamonds formed from the mantle carbon source. Most diamonds have an isotopic signature that matches peridodite, a kind of rock native to the upper mantle, suggesting they formed from this more primitive source.
But even the "eclogite" source diamonds probably aren't from coal, for two reasons:
1) It's problematic coming up with a method to deliver coal the upper mantle: subduction is effectively limited to oceanic plates, and coal doesn't form in oceans. Most coal formed on continents.
2) Most diamonds predate large coal formations. Most diamonds have radiologic ages of a couple billion years. I don't know of any natural diamonds that have been dated to much less than a billion years -- they probably exist, but are very uncommon. In contrast, almost all our coal is from the middle-paleozoic or later, so most of the Earth's coal simply couldn't have contributed to our diamonds because it's too young. Before about 425 million years ago there wasn't much coal production because there weren't land plants. (If coal can form in oceans, I've never heard of it -- other kinds of carbon-rich deposits can form in oceans, but we're not talking about them!)
So based on several lines of reasoning, most diamonds are believed to have formed from an independent carbon reservoir in the mantle. Diamonds are merely foreign objects brought to the surface in a certain rare class of rather violent volcanic eruptions.
I hope that clears things up
Next time you are at a jewelry store have a little bit of fun, when the offer you something with diamonds in just say "What, diamonds at 5 bucks a carat you have got to be joking" the look is always worth it.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Anyhow, my wife is not a big fan of spending a lot of money on diamonds. The center stone for her engagement ring was recycled from a family member who no longer wears hers. The entire setup cost about $500, including the other stones in the band. She loves it. At least that's what she tells me.
"Avoid employing unlucky people - throw half of the pile of CVs in the bin without reading them." -- David Brent
Is your name related to yoga in any way? I've not learned anything about yoga, but last year on my favorite radio station - wruw 91.1 FM (case western reserve university)
www.wruw.org
there was a half hour yoga news and information show hosted by a woman whose name sounded like Jigyasu Atma Darshan. Anyway, your name reminds me of her name, that's why I ask.
More music, fewer hits
The problem with CZs is that they don't even remotely look like a diamond. A moderately trained eye (i.e. anyone who has looked at diamonds before) can instantly recognize a CZ. Even someone who has never really looked closely at a diamond before could tell you which is a diamond and which is a CZ if they are held side by side.
With these manufactured diamonds, they're talking about needing specialized equipment to differentiate them. Yeah, nobody is going to give a fuck if it's called a "diamonoid" or some horrible name (my guess is that they will come up with a pleasing name for marketing like "cultured pearls") if you need a microscope to figure out whether it's natural or manufactured.
"Avoid employing unlucky people - throw half of the pile of CVs in the bin without reading them." -- David Brent
My wife bought the P&G thing, and we still haven't bought the stock because she is trying to "time" the market.
The "first sale" prices charged for diamonds are pretty rigidly controlled. Think of it this way: when you buy a new car from the dealership, you pay the MSRP, or close to it. When you buy a used car, you will pay less than that, but the car might still carry a 5 digit price tag. It's the same sort of thing with diamonds; since the initial price tends to be high, so does the resale price. Pawn shops, for instance, will pay pennies for diamond jewelry, based on the scrap price of the gold, and resell it for less than retail, but far more than they paid. Secondhand stones are out there, depending on the size and quality that you want. Anything over a quarter carat is going to be hard to find at a low price, because that's where you get into desirable sizes for solitaires. Ebay is dicey, simply because of the size of the venue; you really have to dig to find bargains. Some independant jewelers -- the gentleman to whom I apprenticed was one -- will take trade-ins against the price of a larger or more highly graded diamond. There are lots of reasons that it's hard to find secondhand stones; the relative difficulty really depends on what you're looking for.
"Cheap" diamond jewelry is out there, too. 10 karat gold and I3 (at best) stones. Wally World usually carries a bunch of it. ;) That being said, I picked up a .27 ct F-SI1 solitaire for $100 off of an online auction several years ago, but I took a real chance because there wasn't a photo.
As for moissanite? I love it! It has a higher refractive index than diamond, and when properly cut, throws back amazing fire and color. It has about the same hardness as sapphire and ruby; and at about $500 per carat, it's far more affordable than a diamond of similar quality.
There will always be people who just insist on a mined diamond. I'm not one of them, though.
Doing my level best to piss off the religious right wing...
You should get yourself a "handle" by logging in to Slashdot. Your contribution was very valuable, but it will not receive moderation points as Anonymous Coward (unfortunate appellation), and will be buried under the other responses.