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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.
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Eventually they'll be so common that they'll be pretty much worthless!
Viva la fight against capitalism!
My other processor is big-endian.
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.
Some of us could finally get lucky.
You have been eaten by a Hurd of GNU.
We can finally end world hunger with an ampel supply of artifical carrots for everyone!
- python_kiss
Diamonds actually don't last forever, actually. Thermodynamically, it's in the favor of the graphite form of carbon. So all diamonds will eventually turn into graphite.
So whenever you go into a jeweler's shop, try to use that fact to bring the price down.
Maybe that is why DeBeers is fighting this kind of efforts, especially since these artificially produced ones are of better quality than the real ones.
Diamonds are not beautifull when you find them. It is a like a little rock, rough surface, irregular shape, until the cutting and polishing takes place. These artificially made diamonds (it is a diamond, DeBeers does it not want to have that name), are having the basic shapes and most likely will need less cutting.
When there are enough diamonds available, I guess that we will find new applications for it, more usefull applications than a show off how rich we are.
My wife's sketchblog Blob[p]: Gastrono-me
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.
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
If this really is a marketing thing, maybe it's high time for some counter-marketing.
I, for one, would very much prefer a man-made diamond.
A pretty rock which somebody found in a hole is nice, but a man-made diamond is a testament to the wonders of modern engineering.
I would love it if some company were to start selling high-dollar jewelry made exclusively with man-made gems. Call them "artisan crafted" stones or something.
If DeBeers can run a few ads around Valentine's Day to create the illusion that mined stones are worth more than they really are, it seems to me somebody could do the same thing to elevate the perceived value of the man-made ones.
Play the angles just right, and you will have women refusing to consider accepting flawed, irregular, "natrual" stones (which were probably dug up using child labor) as a gift, insisting on the "real" lab-made diamonds, which are perfect.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Generally speaking, lab-grown crystals of any material used as a gemstone -- most notably the corundum group (sapphires and rubies) -- will have fewer imperfections than mined stones. Both the growth process and the "ingredients" are controlled. There are some trade-offs, though: most lab rubies tend to look pinkish and glassy in comparison to mined rubies, because the growth process is so fast. Lab-grown emeralds usually have too much of a blue tint, and that gives them away. When the only use is in jewelry, appearance is the overriding consideration.
However, that's not the case here. Most lab-created corundum, for instance, isn't used in the jewelry trade. Since it was first "grown" in the late 1800s, various industrial and commercial applications have accounted for most of the production. One example is the "glass" plate over the laser in the grocery barcode scanner: actually made from colorless "sapphire" because it is both harder and tougher than glass. The same goes for lab-created diamonds, which can be used in all kinds of ways. A quick Google search on technological applications turns up a whole mess of hits, and you can see for yourself what one of the manufacturers has to say about potential uses.
Doing my level best to piss off the religious right wing...
if anyone tells my girlfriend, they'll die a slow and horrible death.
Free as in mason.
You call that a diamond?
This is a diamond.