A New Technique For Creating Diamonds Discovered

schwit1 writes: In discovering a new solid state for carbon scientists have also discovered that it is a relatively inexpensive way to produce diamonds. The researchers have found that, depending on the substrates, tiny diamonds will form within the Q-carbon, suggesting that they have actually discovered how diamonds are formed deep below the Earth. The hot high pressure environment there allows Q-carbon to naturally form, and in the process of its solidification diamonds are a byproduct. According to Gizmag: "Professor Jay Narayan of North Carolina State University is the lead author of three papers describing the work that sees Q-carbon join the growing list of carbon solids, a list that includes graphite, graphene, fullerene, amorphous carbon and diamond. He has suggested that the only place Q-carbon might be found in the natural world is in the core of certain planets. The researchers created Q-carbon by starting with a thin plate of sapphire (other substrates, such as glass or a plastic polymer, will also work). Using a high-power laser beam, they coated the sapphire with amorphous carbon, a carbon form with no defined crystalline structure. They then hit the carbon with the laser again, raising its temperature to about 4,000 Kelvin, and then rapidly cooled, or quenched, the melted carbon. This stage of quenching is where 'Q' in Q-carbon comes from."

Comments

deBeers will buy them out.

[BarbaraHudson]

There are way more diamonds available than an open market will support (as anyone who bought "investment grade" diamonds found out to their chagrin when they tried to cash in 10 years later and can't even get the price they paid). The only way for deBeers to continue to maintain the cartel is to do the same they did when the Russians threatened to flood the market - make a deal.

Re:deBeers will buy them out.

[msauve]

Where's the +zero Obvious to anyone paying attention moderation choice?

Re:deBeers will buy them out.

[Antique Geekmeister]

> found out to their chagrin when they tried to cash in 10 years late

One doesn't usually purchase diamond jewelry to make a direct profit. One purchases diamond jewelry to hide the assets and keep its ownership and sale out of official record keeping. It was the economic salvation of many immigrant families to have at least a few stones secreted in their luggage, and in some cases even inside their own bodies.

Re:deBeers will buy them out.

[NoNonAlphaCharsHere]

The problem with diamonds (for us little folks, at least) has always been that you buy diamonds at retail, but sell them at wholesale. So that pretty much rules them out as "investment grade" anything.

Re: deBeers will buy them out.

[Anonymous Coward]

Just like they did with the last two ways discovered to make diamonds

Re: deBeers will buy them out.

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.theatlantic.com/past/issues/82feb/8202diamond1.htm

http://www.exposingtruth.com/diamond-engagement-ring-greatest-marketing-scam-history/

Re: deBeers will buy them out.

[Anonymous Coward]

Selling individual diamonds at a profit, even those held over long periods of time, can be surprisingly difficult. For example, in 1970, the London-based consumer magazine Money Which? decided to test diamonds as a decade long investment. It bought two gem-quality diamonds, weighing approximately one-half carat apiece, from one of London's most reputable diamond dealers, for £400 (then worth about a thousand dollars). For nearly nine years, it kept these two diamonds sealed in an envelope in its vault. During this same period, Great Britain experienced inflation that ran as high as 25 percent a year. For the diamonds to have kept pace with inflation, they would have had to increase in value at least 300 percent, making them worth some £400 pounds by 1978. But when the magazine's editor, Dave Watts,tried to sell the diamonds in 1978, he found that neither jewelry stores nor wholesale dealers in London's Hatton Garden district would pay anywhere near that price for the diamonds. Most of the stores refused to pay any cash for them; the highest bid Watts received was £500, which amounted to a profit of only £100 in over eight years, or less than 3 percent at a compound rate of interest. If the bid were calculated in 1970 pounds, it would amount to only £167. Dave Watts summed up the magazine's experiment by saying, "As an 8-year investment the diamonds that we bought have proved to be very poor." The problem was that the buyer, not the seller, determined the price.

The magazine conducted another experiment to determine the extent to which larger diamonds appreciate in value over a one-year period. In 1970, it bought a 1.42 carat diamond for £745. In 1971, the highest offer it received for the same gem was £568. Rather than sell it at such an enormous loss, Watts decided to extend the experiment until 1974, when he again made the round of the jewelers in Hatton Garden to have it appraised. During this tour of the diamond district, Watts found that the diamond had mysteriously shrunk in weight to 1.04 carats. One of the jewelers had apparently switched diamonds during the appraisal. In that same year, Watts, undaunted, bought another diamond, this one 1.4 carats, from a reputable London dealer. He paid £2,595. A week later, he decided to sell it. The maximum offer he received was £1,000.

In 1976, the Dutch Consumer Association also tried to test the price appreciation of diamonds by buying a perfect diamond of over one carat in Amsterdam, holding it for eight months, and then offering it for sale to the twenty leading dealers in Amsterdam. Nineteen refused to buy it, and the twentieth dealer offered only a fraction of the purchase price.

Re:deBeers will buy them out.

[ShanghaiBill]

The problem with diamonds (for us little folks, at least) has always been that you buy diamonds at retail, but sell them at wholesale.

There is a solution: eBay. At your local mall, the retail price is about double the wholesale price. On eBay, you can buy a certified diamond, from a dealer with a 99.5% approval rating, for about 10% over wholesale. I bought a loose diamond for an engagement ring on eBay, paid $50 to have it appraised, and then had it mounted on a ring that my fiancee picked out. Saved myself about a full month's paycheck.

Re: deBeers will buy them out.

[Anonymous Coward]

Every single time a member of my family has had jewelry evaluated the jeweller has required to keep the item overnight. Makes you wonder why.

Re: deBeers will buy them out.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not an immigrant but I always have one diamond "tucked away" in case of emergencies. (And I'm a guy)

Re: deBeers will buy them out.

[Anonymous Coward]

Every single time a member of my family has had jewelry evaluated the jeweller has required to keep the item overnight. Makes you wonder why.

Perhaps there is a law that requires them to verify that it isn't stolen goods?

Re:deBeers will buy them out.

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

I suspect that it depends on how difficult the product of this process is to distinguish from naturally occurring diamond(assuming it can produce reasonably large crystals of suitable quality at competitive cost at all, not just industrial-grade abrasives or thin-films). There are already a variety of imitation materials available, some pretty terrible, some really quite adequate for most purposes. If these synthesized crystals can be reasonably easily distinguished(some sort of nondestructive test with reasonably low cost instruments by someone of moderate skill) then it will be easier to keep them out of the 'real' diamond supply chain; and to treat them as just one of the fakes for marketing purposes. If there is no such test available, then there will be some serious unhappiness.

Because diamonds have some extremely useful properties(superb abrasion resistance, extremely high thermal conductivity, good chemical stability, some potential as a semiconductor, etc.) trying to fight a process that can synthesize them in the necessary quantities and sizes would ultimately involve an industry that sells shiny trinkets going up against a whole bunch of larger and markedly more important industries that would have use for one or more of these properties. As long as the 'synthetics' can be distinguished from the 'real' diamonds; and stigmatized accordingly, there will be an incentive to stop trying to win the battle against all the potential industrial users; and focus instead on hyping the virtues of 'natural' diamonds, for everyone whose love isn't cold, sterile, and engineered in some laboratory.

If the only value of diamonds was being shiny, it'd be a lot easier to keep the lid on; but their properties are interesting enough that jewelry would be a footnote if bulk synthesis were available.

Re: deBeers will buy them out.

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Why diamond rather than gold? The value density is a little bit lower(assuming a decent quality stone); but metals tend to have a much, much, smaller gap between purchase price and sale price at any given time; can be divided if necessary without reducing their value, and are similarly imperishable, fairly hard to trace, and likely to have a buyer available almost anywhere.

As an 'investment', gold has a pretty tepid history; but at least you can actually buy and sell at reasonably close to the nominal market price, rather than eating a large automatic loss the moment you buy.

Re:deBeers will buy them out.

[NoNonAlphaCharsHere]

Myself, I'm a long time customer of the nice Jewish boy who owns the local pawn shop. Gotten some great deals there, especially on the second purchase of the day. Donald Trump is right, "those people" love to haggle :-D

Re: deBeers will buy them out.

[yes-but-no]

That's a very ingenious way to bring in a law whose real purpose was different. It's like bringing in prohibition/drug-ban because you can help your cartel run the illegal business. Give a feel-good reason to the masses when the real reason is to aid the powers that be. So here is the algorithm -- when you want X, find some way to enact law Y which appeals to the masses; when Y is implemented as side-effect you will obtain X.

Re: deBeers will buy them out.

[Flavianoep]

Also, gold melts, but never burns.

Diamonds, however, are flammable.

Re:deBeers will buy them out.

[AmiMoJo]

Some girls think it's cheap if you bring coupons to the restaurant on the first date. I'm with ShanghaiBill on this one though, if I were ever inclined to spend that much on a ring I'm sure my fiancée would appreciate that I was smart about it.

Re:deBeers will buy them out.

[PPalmgren]

Diamonds are extremely cheap to mine in volume, so its unlikely that any artificial methods of creation would beat them on cost. Current artificial methods such as CVD are only profitable because of the jewelry industry and the artificially inflated value of diamonds, so it could see niche use if it shows better cost and results than CVD and high pressure methods.

Even if we were to get high quality diamonds in high surplus to use for jewelry, they'd still be somewhat expensive. Why? The cut is a specialized labor intensive skill process that can make or break a diamond. A lot of the price comes from this expensive process.

Re:deBeers will buy them out.

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

I'd imagine that synthesizing diamond would be uncompetitive for industrial abrasives(unless there happens to be some cheap method that is considered a dead-end because it only produces tiny crystals); and might well also be hard pressed to match basic, small, natural diamonds; but for applications that require a thin film deposited on something, or big chunks of low-defect material, the naturally occurring options are much rarer. If you wanted to use diamonds for something like packaging semiconductors, to take advantage of their superb conductivity, you'd just be cutting slices; but you'd need large stones to start with; and (unlike metals) a bunch of small diamonds can't be turned into a large diamond very easily.

Re:deBeers will buy them out.

[red crab]

Other way around, De Beers might go bankrupt; ff this technique produces diamonds cheaply that are impossible to differentiate against natural diamonds,

Re:deBeers will buy them out.

[Anonymous Coward]

I would imagine that lab grown diamonds are more forgiving. if you have a lot of cheap uniform source material to cut then.
it becomes easier to cut vs irregular stones dug out of the ground and also it becomes cheaper to train new cutters.

Re:deBeers will buy them out.

[BarbaraHudson]

They'll make the same deal as with the Russians - we'll contract to buy $X amount of product (where $X is a huge number), and you don't sell to anyone else. Both parties end up with more money in their pockets.

Re: deBeers will buy them out.

[Anonymous Coward]

My great-grandparents bought a few diamonds back in the 1920's. I don't have a lot of context, but is was some kind of investment fad. I now wear one in a ring. I think you make some excellent points about why this never took off in a big way, but I can see how some could be duped into thinking that this is a good investment vehicle.

Re: deBeers will buy them out.

[Anonymous Coward]

You can hide a million dollar diamond on your person with relative ease. A million dollars in gold weighs about 60 pounds.

Re:deBeers will buy them out.

[hendrips]

Very true. My own great-great-grandfather came to the United States with a handful of diamonds stored in the heel of his boot, when he fled Prussia. He sold most of the diamonds when he got here, but kept one which eventually passed to me, and which I used for my wife's engagement ring. Side note: family tradition says that great-great-granddad stole that one from a DeBeers facility in Belgium. I doubt it's true, but it ought to be; I like imagining that instead of funding the DeBeers monopoly when I got my wife her ring, I'm giving them a metaphorical middle finger instead.

Re: deBeers will buy them out.

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

On the minus side, you have to sell the million-dollar diamond all at once, if you can find a buyer, while you can dispose of the gold in much more conveniently sized transactions. If you are in an environment where rule of law is fully operational and you are operating within it, various financial instruments offer higher value density than just about any physically valuable object; and if rule of law is unavailable, or you are skirting it, disposing of a single unusual and very valuable piece is going to be a lot trickier than selling easily divisible bits, both in terms of finding buyers and in not attracting excessive attention. Diamonds are unlikely to be as bad as art in terms of liquidity; but ones of any significant worth will be of interest to a pretty select audience, while metal trinkets scale comparatively neatly from low end pawnshop transactions to the iconic 400oz bricks.

Re:deBeers will buy them out.

[goose-incarnated]

Some girls think it's cheap if you bring coupons to the restaurant on the first date. I'm with ShanghaiBill on this one though, if I were ever inclined to spend that much on a ring I'm sure my fiancée would appreciate that I was smart about it.

I've been married multiple times. Will also probably be married multiple times in the future. Never did I ever think "I wonder if she'll like the jewelry I bought for her". Not once.

My attitude towards SO gift-buying has always been "If you don't like it, there are a hundred other girls lining up behind you to be with me."

Re:deBeers will buy them out.

[stoatwblr]

"One purchases diamond jewelry to hide the assets and keep its ownership and sale out of official record keeping"

No, one buys proper precious stones such as the carborundum family. Rubies and emeralds in particular hold their value quite well.

Diamonds are both vulgar and common.

Re:deBeers will buy them out.

[stoatwblr]

"I'd imagine that synthesizing diamond would be uncompetitive for industrial abrasives"

You'd imagine wrong. The vast majority of industrial abrasive diamonds are made using TNT (yes really).

Look up Detonation Nanodiamonds.

Re: deBeers will buy them out.

[pupsocket]

You can't survive on diamonds, because they aren't liquid investments, but they are durable and portable enough to re-establish a business or a residence someplace safe.

Re:deBeers will buy them out.

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

It probably depends on the desired shape, as well. The cuts designed to take advantage of diamond's extraordinary refractive index and get that 'brilliance' that other gems can't match involve cutting a whole lot of facets into a stone, and figuring out what the largest possible stone of the desired shape is that can be fit within the raw diamond(and avoid any defects, inclusions, etc.) That takes skill.

If you are just banging out thermal spreaders/substrates for the semiconductor industry, you'd basically just need a bunch of rectangles. Probably a pain because diamonds are hard enough to be murder on basically any cutting and grinding tools, no matter what you make them out of; but baby's first CNC project in terms of geometric complexity.

Re:deBeers will buy them out.

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Interesting. Did not know that. Thanks for the heads-up.

Re:deBeers will buy them out.

[Anonymous Coward]

The only way to tell if a diamond is synthetic, is by how perfect it is compared to a natural one. The only way to make a diamond that can't be distinguished is by simulating the flaws.

De Beers is going to be pissed

[Anonymous Coward]

'To maintain the perception that diamonds were rare, De Beers not only significantly limited how many diamonds they mined each year, but also literally started buying up all the other diamonds and just stockpiling them (along with their own excess supply). Combined with a decades-long advertising campaign, they created a perception out of thin air that diamonds were rare and valuable, and that you had to drop thousands of dollars on one to prove you loved your spouse. The monopoly De Beers holds is so blatantly illegal by U.S. antitrust laws that they've been banned from selling in the U.S. (they're forced to sell to intermediaries on the international market). Until they pleaded guilty to price fixing charges in 2004, their executives wouldn't even set foot on American soil because they feared they'd be arrested on sight. While there are indications that the cartel might finally be slowly losing its grip on the market, it's been a pretty damn impressive run.' http://www.cracked.com/article... http://www.cracked.com/article...

Re:De Beers is going to be pissed

[msauve]

Excellent. Not till the end does one see the "cracked.com" link!

Re:De Beers is going to be pissed

[JoeyRox]

Da Beers will use the same marketing strategy they use against existing man-made diamonds - telling consumers on how "organic" diamonds are somehow better:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/...

Re:De Beers is going to be pissed

[Anonymous Coward]

Excellent. Not till the end does one see the "cracked.com" link!

What does that have to do with anything? You say that as if it was the Onion.

Re:De Beers is going to be pissed

[Anonymous Coward]

Organic? But all diamonds contain carbon!

Re:De Beers is going to be pissed

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

The natural ones are just so much more romantic. Why sully your finger with some soulless rock synthesized with care, skill, and years of materials science research when you could get one extracted from a giant hole in the ground by the backbreaking labor of mining peons? Even those, though, show a lack of true commitment. Conflict diamonds are where it's at.

Re:De Beers is going to be pissed

[burtosis]

Yes organic diamonds are far superior. Did you ever go to get a synthetic one appraised and find a disturbing lack of carbon?

Re:De Beers is going to be pissed

[Greystripe]

Quit being so PC, they're blood diamonds. They are great because even though you can't see the blood spilled you can easily imagine it, thereby giving the diamond a rosy glint in your mind's eye. And as we all know red roses means love so, voila! Blood diamonds are the most romantic.

Re:De Beers is going to be pissed

[Triklyn]

Debeers Red, it's not real unless someone has died for your love.

Re:De Beers is going to be pissed

[mattack2]

BTW, cracked.com is NOT directly related to the old Cracked magazine (basically a low rent Mad Magazine ripoff).

They bought the URL and the logo. Otherwise, AFAIK, it is unconnected... So you can't necessarily ignore anything as humor pieces.

The Diamond Cartel

[retaj]

The challenge is to avoid these kinds of industrial techniques from being legislated into oblivion.

Re:The Diamond Cartel

[Anonymous Coward]

Expect the diamond cartel not just deBeers but US companies making money out of engagement rings to lean on North Carolina State University and to make political donations to pliable congressmen because "WE HAVE TO LOOK AFTER THE INTERESTS OF OUR SHAREHOLDERS". If companies are people, they are immortal sociopaths.

Re:The Diamond Cartel

[Anonymous Coward]

Legislation hasn't stopped previous industrial techniques. I can get artificial, industrial diamonds a lot cheaper than ones in jewellery shops, ranging from small grit that wouldn't be appropriate to jewellery, or larger plates that are used for their combination of strength and heat conduction in various lab equipment. Most of the protection of the natural diamond market comes from marketing, and in the past from being able to tell the difference easily between artificial and natural diamonds. In the last year or so, I've been hearing and seeing ads from some of the higher end jewellery shops in my town as they suddenly trying to sell artificial diamonds and are trying to undo years of marketing against them.

I'm sure...

[Anonymous Coward]

I didnt read the summary but I'm sure it involves shoving coal up a conservative's ass and telling them Obama is going to take their guns / free speech / religion

It's pretty sad

[shione]

When something is no longer rare but the price is still kept high. We can make cultured pearls but you don't see cheap pearls all around the place. We can easily make diamonds too with a lot of pressure. Ever year tonnes of diamonds are ground to dust to use as a coating on industrial tools just so the price of large diamonds can be kept high.

Re:It's pretty sad

[Anonymous Coward]

Ever year tonnes of diamonds are ground to dust to use as a coating on industrial tools just so the price of large diamonds can be kept high.

Or, maybe because they are actually needed for industrial tools? The way you say it sounds like a conspiracy theory.

Re:It's pretty sad

[Kartu]

Price talk aside, while we know how to grow large sapphires (to a point that Apple could have used them instead of "gorilla glass"), I don't recall anyone ever succeeding at growing a big diamond.
Artificial "diamond dust" is all that create so far and that is being used in industry.

Re:It's pretty sad

[Anonymous Coward]

This method appears to create the dust you are talking about, which actually may be of greater utility to industry than larger diamonds.

However, the older chemical vapor deposition (CVD) can produce fairly large flawless diamonds (in varying colors to boot). The diamonds created by this process actually prompted the industry to come up with a new test procedure. The new diamonds are determined to be artificial because their structure is too perfect to be naturally formed.

Re:It's pretty sad

[stoatwblr]

"We can make cultured pearls but you don't see cheap pearls all around the place."

That's because cultured pearls are still expensive to produce, but if you go to Tahiti/Rarotonga you can get black ones at 1/10 the retail price (that's where they're cultured).

Uncultured pearls are fabulously expensive. They make emeralds look cheap.

diamonds

[Anonymous Coward]

Come on you boy child
you winner and loser
come on you miner for truth and delusion
and shine

Impurity?

[linear a]

So ... diamonds are the unwanted impurity here?

Re:Impurity?

[Anonymous Coward]

Dr. Zoidberg: I can't stop. When I eat too much dirt I get stuff in my throat.
Amy Wong: You are so disgusting! I...
[Gasps as she sees that Zoidberg is hacking up blue pearls; she takes a handful]
Amy Wong: They're beautiful!
Dr. Zoidberg: Eww, you're touching them!
Turanga Leela: I've never seen such beautiful pearls. Dr. Zoidberg, you're amazing!
Dr. Zoidberg: I am? At last, recognition!

Wait, a new technology?

[Anonymous Coward]

So I guess that's another thing we can cross off the list of "absurdly valuable" stuff we're supposedly mining from asteroids.

I wonder how people who believe technology always gets better also somehow think we're just going to stand still and wait for their magical asteroid mining (which will never happen)???

Anything that devalues minerals...

[EzInKy]

...that some see as sacrosanct is a good thing. I cheer every time I see gold get closer to worthless.

Re:Anything that devalues minerals...

[tsotha]

Why? Good idea or no, a lot of decent people have put a large share of their savings in gems and precious metals.

Re:Anything that devalues minerals...

[phantomfive]

Those people who put a large share of their savings in gems and precious metals made a mistake. it's a bad idea to begin with.

The reason I want mineral prices to drop is so they can be used more places. Gold is a great conductor, and diamonds are still pretty. The lower prices drop, the closer I get to my dream of a diamond-studded, gold-plated toilet.

Re:Anything that devalues minerals...

[EzInKy]

Stupid people perhaps. Anybody who doesn't realize that the only true value lies in labor deserves to be fleeced. Review Adam Smith if you will.

Re:Anything that devalues minerals...

[EzInKy]

Exactly, it is only the value added by human labor that dictates the worth of things. Sad to see so many who neglect the teaches of Adam Smith.

Re:Anything that devalues minerals...

[ShanghaiBill]

Why? Good idea or no, a lot of decent people have put a large share of their savings in gems and precious metals.

The world would be much better off if they invested their money in productive assets. If you invest in stocks or bonds, or a family business, then your money goes to help companies expand, and create jobs, goods, and services. If you invest in gems and precious metals, your money goes to expand mines that cause horrible pollution, and extensive erosion. Many gem and gold mines use children or coerced labor. Anything that makes gems and precious metals a worse investment, is a good thing.

Re:Anything that devalues minerals...

[xtronics]

Gold almost worthless??? -- Lets make the wires of our houses out of gold! - oops only a swimming pool of the stuff exists.. there is this thing - scarcity vs demand. And when fiat currencies fail - what do people turn to?

You could buy dollars - bits of paper that have value based on what the political elites tell you - of course those same people tell lies about most everything. So how is gold going to become worthless - in the long run vs fiat currency? Gold looks like a pretty good buy right now. Gold is worth something because it has utility (because of it's scarcity, it holds value in small amounts thus useful for trade - longterm storage of wealth - not really an investment - more of a safe haven when currencies fail)

Better yet - how about bitcoin? http://www.google.com/finance?...

Now why is bitcoin worth something? ( holds value because of it's scarcity - even more useful for trade than gold - yet to see the long term).

Interesting time we live in - the Feds must keep the price of stocks inflated or people will realize the pension funds are broke - but doing that will eventually destroy the dollar - some precipitating event - unexpected of course.. next week - or 20 years???

Re:Anything that devalues minerals...

[mark-t]

When is it that you've seen gold get closer to worthless?

Re:Anything that devalues minerals...

[mark-t]

Gold supply on earth is too limited to ever drop in price. All of the world's gold could fit into a cube that is less than 20 meters on each side.

Re: Anything that devalues minerals...

[Anonymous Coward]

Gold shmold. Barbarous relic.

Re:Anything that devalues minerals...

[Anonymous Coward]

The difference between gold and bitcoin is that we know accessible gold is rare on Earth, because the science of physics has proven and explained that.

On the other hand, geek people only think and hope that bitcoins are rare. The math behind it may be cooked either accidentally or even intentionally. (If you think a group of cypher-punks developed bitcoin for years without the NSA / Unit 8200 noticing, I have an ethernet bridge to sell you. Elliptic curves are about as trustworthy as female curves.) If you wake up one day and find all possible bitcoins (yet mined and yet unmined) dumped on the net in a text file, don't be suprised. Don't even be suprised if one day you find all possible bitcoins and each one's 137 yet unheard of but valid isomers dumped on the net. There is no proof bitcoins cannot be generated procedurally through an algorythm backdoor, without burning giant piles of VGA and ASIC cards. The bimbo-coin value will be wiped out in seconds.

Re:Anything that devalues minerals...

[Anonymous Coward]

Um, have you included the gold that's dissolved in sea water? As technology gets better, the proven reserves of gold will increase!

Re:Anything that devalues minerals...

[phantomfive]

Even now, gold is almost cheap enough for a gold-plated toilet.

Re:Anything that devalues minerals...

[crunchygranola]

And yet, labor is paid a smaller and smaller share of what if produces. You hear a lot of talk about the verities of Adam Smith on the right, but none of them seem to have actually read him (cherry picking is not reading).

The seem to have a lot of time to read "Atlas Shrugged" though. Both books are about the same length, but Adam Smith is much easier going.

Re:Anything that devalues minerals...

[mark-t]

It's my understanding that the figure includes *all* of the earth's gold, whether currently accessible or not.

Mercury could have several orders of magnitude more gold on it than Earth does though.

Re: Anything that devalues minerals...

[Anonymous Coward]

You actually don't know how rare gold is. Most gold produced has ended up purchased and stored somewhere. It is unknown how much of that has been lost, and how much is available to the whims of some one to dump on the market when they want to are motivated to do so.

Re:Anything that devalues minerals...

[tsotha]

The way the money supply works right now any investment you do with your savings has no effect. Banks are dying to lend money to credit-worthy borrowers, and there's no limit to the amount of money that can be borrowed.

Re:Anything that devalues minerals...

[stoatwblr]

"The lower prices drop, the closer I get to my dream of a diamond-studded, gold-plated toilet"

As soon as space-based mining is a "thing", the precious metals markets on earth will collapse. Gold and platinum are relatively common in space and relatively rare on earth because most of it sank to the core during planetary formation (It's believed most crustal deposits are courtesy of the LHB)

Even if undersea mining takes off you'll see a step-drop. Metals concentrations around various volcanic vents are 10-50 times higher than land-based deposits, which more than makes up for the cost of having to send grinding equipment 5000 feet down, especially when you factor in the lack of overburden blocking access to the minerals.

Re:Anything that devalues minerals...

[stoatwblr]

"It's my understanding that the figure includes *all* of the earth's gold, whether currently accessible or not."

The real amount of crustal gold is unknown but that number is about right for "everything mined ever" whilst the estimated amount in the crust is about 20 times higher (just too expensive to extract)

The interesting thing is that more volume of gold is traded each year than is supposed to physically exist, which means some is whizzing around a lot or some gold reserves are actually bogus

That segues nicely into the factoid that a lot of countries are currently pissed off at the USA for refusing to return their gold reserves (much of what is in the Federal Reserve belongs to other countries) and there have been rumours circulating for the last decade that the reason the USA isn't returning it, is because they don't have it to return, having lent it out to 3rd parties as "US gold" - (ie, theft by conversion of ownership). Nooone wants to test that theory too much because if proven it would really be the end of confidence in various physical currencies.

Does it require

[nerdyalien]

Vodka ?

Re:Does it require

[Antique Geekmeister]

I thought it took tequila.

        http://news.nationalgeographic...

                             

Women's reaction to protential a price drop

[batistuta]

Women always want diamonds because they are "beautiful". If their price drops to the floor, I wonder whether they will still like them on their wedding rings. Truth is, most women don't care about what they wear, as long as they have the feeling that you bought them something special. And if their friends envy them, then it's even better.

Re:Women's reaction to protential a price drop

[ShanghaiBill]

Women always want diamonds because they are "beautiful".

No. They want them as a demonstration of their potential mate's commitment and willingness to expend resources. Peacocks grow big tail feathers. Men buy diamonds. The reason is the same.

If their price drops to the floor, I wonder whether they will still like them on their wedding rings.

Of course not. A cubic zirconium gem looks just as good as a diamond, yet few women would knowingly accept a CZ engagement ring.

Re:Women's reaction to protential a price drop

[Anonymous Coward]

Q-carbons are a girls best friend?

Re:Women's reaction to protential a price drop

[labnet]

Women always want diamonds because they are "beautiful". If their price drops to the floor, I wonder whether they will still like them on their wedding rings. Truth is, most women don't care about what they wear, as long as they have the feeling that you bought them something special. And if their friends envy them, then it's even better.

Good summary. A woman is actually looking to be valued which requires the man to suffer pain. Pain in researching, pain in the wallet. Flowers are similar. For example, flowers from a service station are much less valuable than flowers from a florist, even though the product might be very similar. The service station is convenient and cheap; so the woman perceives your love for her as convenient and cheap.
I'm not saying this is bad thing; it is just the way most women are wired.

Re: Women's reaction to protential a price drop

[Anonymous Coward]

Well I'm proper fucked. I'd gladly try to pass of a CZ ring, til i remembered the girl I'm dating is from a family of jewelers.

Re:Women's reaction to protential a price drop

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not that one picks flowers from a convenience station, it's that a woman can _tell_ you picked them at a convenience station. They're very keen to lying, because, as it turns out, women are taught to lie to protect themselves from harm. (For example, society pressures them not to be open about how much they enjoy sex, so they aren't labeled a whore, and that men will behave themselves around her.)

In short, be honest. If you want a cheap whore, buy cheap flowers. She won't care.

Re:Women's reaction to protential a price drop

[yes-but-no]

I don't think they care if it's beautiful or not; what you mention of envy is the reason. Basically it's a comparison game and they want "substance" to talk to their friends/family -- see how much he adores me.. so she needs proof..that's all. Whatever she can show-off to the world that she is worthy..she will go for it. I believe deep down she is comparing herself with other females [male is never a competitor to a female; he is already won before the competition even starts]. She is just looking for external confirmation that she is great/better.

Of course if there is a true enlightened person/female... who is above all comparison game..the above is not true for her.

Re: Women's reaction to protential a price drop

[yes-but-no]

Just act as though you got cheated :p stupidity is forgiven more easily [Lawyer: My client may be stupid, but not guilty/bad]

Re:Women's reaction to protential a price drop

[AmiMoJo]

It's not women, it's human beings. Men want expensive shit too, even though there is functionally and even aesthetically similar stuff available at a fraction of the price. Genuine kits for their favourite sports team. Rare pokemon. Sports cars that they never take racing. Even trophy wives.

That's how consumerism and advertising works. My girlfriend likes those ugly Vitton handbags, because her friends have them. I tell myself I want an expensive oscilloscope to do engineering with, but actually my current one is more than adequate... Don't even get me started on why I want original arcade game PCBs, when even pro players can't tell the difference with emulation.

Don't buy the old "women are always looking to upgrade to a richer man" either. Many men are looking to upgrade to a hotter woman if they think their status will allow it. Those people are shallow consumers, and not worth getting angry about.

Re:Women's reaction to protential a price drop

[Minupla]

Mehaps you're not finding the right women then? My wife and I have a running joke about me spending too much money at Tiffany's - then I buy her what she really wants, which is typically some piece of gaming PC hardware, or a Raspberry Pi, etc. Don't get me wrong, she loves the occasional nice piece of jewelry, but she'd kill me if I did something so impractical with our money as buy an overpriced piece of jewelry from Tiffany's. She'd rather get a shiny gaming laptop :)

More and more women and finding that they can stop behaving like cardboard cutouts from commercials. My wife pretended for years not to be a geek because she thought it was wrong for girls to be a geek. Go find one :)

Min

Re:Women's reaction to protential a price drop

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

[snip] I'm not saying this is bad thing; it is just the way most women are wired.

I read that as women are weird. I am not saying it is a bad thing; Just the way I am wired.

Re:Women's reaction to protential a price drop

[DNS-and-BIND]

Women are innate liars? What is this, the sexist pig Olympics? Please try again, without mentioning the Garden of Eden myth. Have you even heard of Bluebeard?

Re: Women's reaction to protential a price drop

[DNS-and-BIND]

Contact her family secretly and buy from them direct. You won't get a fake and you'll get best price. What are you, nuts?

Re: Women's reaction to protential a price drop

[bill_mcgonigle]

Most American women don't know anything about the history or the current market situation of diamonds. It's not very complicated to explain (audio). Go ahead and try - if your woman is interested then that's good. If she still wants a diamond afterwards, unless she's really specifically enthralled with the way the light reflects around inside the diamond (it's pretty impressive with a high quality gem), then perhaps it's best to move on. You don't really want to spend your whole life with a woman who values diamonds just for the price.

Re:Women's reaction to protential a price drop

[ceoyoyo]

To be fair, he clearly said women are taught to lie. That is, they are not innate liars, society makes them that way.

Re:Women's reaction to protential a price drop

[Big_Breaker]

100% this

Re:Women's reaction to protential a price drop

[Anonymous Coward]

Hearing or seeing a pronouncement of what "Blacks", "Jews", "Muslims", "Whites", "Mexicans", think... ...unless the qualifying words "Some" or "Many" are in front: e.g. "Some Mexicans think"...

Has always spelled racism, to me.

No different than the reveal of bigotry when a statement begins with "Men think..." or "Women think..."

This woman thinks the comments on this forum about what "women" think about diamonds are full of sh*t, and the men making them sound like bigots.

Re:Women's reaction to protential a price drop

[Anonymous Coward]

It also confers significant social status. I took a huge risk in not getting my wife a diamond engagement ring -- all her sisters and friends automatically gawked at her finger, which bore a simple ring and said, "hey, where's the diamond???"

Things have gotten to the point where, if you don't have the rock, something is terribly wrong.

Re: Women's reaction to protential a price drop

[Anonymous Coward]

You missed the above point: "They want them as a demonstration of their potential mate's commitment and willingness to expend resources."

The "value" in a diamond is that it inherently represents a resource commitment which is readily observable to others. Convincing a girl not to have "blood diamonds" or whatever just means that she switches over to wanting a sapphire/platinum/TRex*/custom symbol of the commitment.

Did you know that the top of the Washington Monument is made of aluminum? Its so that other nations would be impressed with our wealth/power.

*https://www.etsy.com/listing/237639273/tyrannosaurus-meteorite-titanium-ring

Re: Women's reaction to protential a price drop

[ShanghaiBill]

... then perhaps it's best to move on. You don't really want to spend your whole life with a woman who values diamonds just for the price.

I predict that you will have as much mating success as a peacock that plucks out his tail feathers.

Re:Women's reaction to protential a price drop

[Jax Omen]

Strongly agree. Last year we rebuilt my woman's PC.

Her first requirement? "I want the graphics card you have, and I want a crazy fast CPU" (she was on an old Athlon X4 that was showing it's age in the games she plays)

If I bought her jewelry I'd get yelled at. She wants a bigger SSD next.

Re:Women's reaction to protential a price drop

[AmiMoJo]

I prefer to be friends with my future wife. Friends don't expect diamonds. More than that, I'd only want to marry someone who has the financial sense not to waste money on bling.

Fortunately there are plenty of women like that. Maybe you are looking in the wrong place.

Re: Women's reaction to protential a price drop

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, you are obviously an expert on women. Thank you for sharing your womanly knowledge with us.

Re: Women's reaction to protential a price drop

[Antique Geekmeister]

What makes you think you won't get a fake?

Re:Women's reaction to protential a price drop

[Minupla]

Yip, awesome isn't it?

Met my wife on a MUSH in the 1990s. Best TCP connection I ever made!

Min

Re:Women's reaction to protential a price drop

[stoatwblr]

"I prefer to be friends with my future wife. Friends don't expect diamonds."

My wife bought me a diamond wedding ring, but that's what you kind of expect when she's a jewellery designer.

(I find it uncomfortable and it scratches stuff too much, but SWMBO has spoken)

Great video on diamonds and engagement rings

[bjdevil66]

Adam Ruins Everything - Diamond Engagement Rings

A great four minute video that breaks down the whole diamond engagement rings scam (which I fell for, too... if I had to do it again - there'd be no rock.)

Re:Great video on diamonds and engagement rings

[nbritton]

The next time you get married try a Moissanite ring. Mojssanite is silicon carbide so it's hard as hell and it actually has more brilliance then a diamond. The only ones who will know are the seller, buyer, receiver, and the appraiser, there is no way normal person can find out it isn't a diamond unless someone tells them. You can buy twice the rock size for half the cost. Simply tell your spouse that the rock came from a meteorite and that it's one of a kind, she'll eat it up.

Re:Great video on diamonds and engagement rings

[ceoyoyo]

It's pretty easy to tell that Moissanite isn't diamond. Just shine a white light on it. The difference in refraction is easy to see by eye: the Moissanite is much more sparkly.

diamonds value

[Yanglish]

When many will have diamonds, they can lose value even more.

What Size?

[tinkerton]

Size matters with diamonds and I find nothing about size.
There is a large industrial market for tiny diamonds and these can be made in more than one way. This is probably about making the tiny ones cheap.

There are detonation diamonds, created in the high pressure of contained explosions. Iran has gotten a lot of attention for their work on that in Parchin because if they do contained explosions that can only be because they want to make nukes.

Re:What Size?

[Rob Lister]

Your post is the only on-topic one so far. Yea, the value of this is not creating diamonds for the jewelry market. This new process allows them to create bulk quantities of micro-diamonds at very low cost. What are they good for? Tools for industry and medicine. I'm guessing there are a number of electronics and display applications. I suppose it is speculative.

Narayan says he envisages Q-carbon's first useful application will be in creating "a diamond factory for nanoproducts" for use in drug delivery and industrial processes. "We can make Q-carbon films, and we're learning its properties, but we are still in the early stages of understanding how to manipulate it," Narayan says. "We know a lot about diamond, so we can make diamond nanodots and microneedles, [but] we don't yet know how to make Q-carbon nanodots or microneedles. That's something we're working on."

have debeers sued thm for copyright and

[Anonymous Coward]

trademark infringement yet?

LMAO THEN CRY

[Anonymous Coward]

mod parent interesting

“We’re very focused on detection,” said the head of technologies at De Beers. “It underpins the integrity of natural diamonds and ensures that consumers cannot be duped into buying a synthetic diamond.” HOW CAN THIS MAN KEEP A STRAIGHT FACE? HE SHOULD BURST OUT LAUGHING AND ADD “I'm sorry, I couldn't keep a straight face. Oh mercy. But seriously: no woman woman would want a synthetic diamond made by some guy in a white coat. They would much rather have a dozen dead child miners so they could wear that rock on their rings. The truth is, woman want children to die so they can wave around a stupid cheap rock on their fingers. Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! Zuckenberg said his customers were dumb fucks. Well our are dumb and do much more damage. ”

Huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Gold supply on earth is too limited to ever drop in price.

I take it you haven't tracked gold prices over the last year or so...

Women's reaction to diamonds

[Anonymous Coward]

Women always want diamonds because they are "beautiful". If their price drops to the floor, I wonder whether they will still like them on their wedding rings. Truth is, most women don't care about what they wear, as long as they have the feeling that you bought them something special. And if their friends envy them, then it's even better.

Good summary. A woman is actually looking to be valued which requires the man to suffer pain. Pain in researching, pain in the wallet. ... it is just the way most women are wired.

About 40 years ago, I asked a girl I was madly infatuated with if she wanted to have me donate the price of an engagement ring to charity instead of buying her the De Beers scam. She was the person my infatuated state thought she was, and said yes. Dunno what I would have done if she said she needed to have something to show off to her friends. I'm still madly infatuated with her.

These are still expensive however

[PeterM from Berkeley]

At least so far as I've been able to determine, these cost from 25% to 50% as much as a natural diamond.

I won't buy one, due to cost, but I would if they were as cheap as artificial rubies and artificial sapphires: you can get really good sized ones for $10.

Sugar Daddy

[Anonymous Coward]

So sleeping with Trump or any other sugar daddy is no longer necessary?*
clansaorsa

So many standards to pick from

[Anonymous Coward]

NITPICK: Do not write "4,000 Kelvin"; write 4,000 kelvins. [see section 2.1.1.5 of The International System of Units (SI) brochure, 8th edition, 2006.] Just like 4,000 amperes or 4,000 volts, kelvins are named after a person. The man's name is always capitalized. A unit named after a person, when spelled out, is "never" (single exception: Celsius units) capitalized. A unit's abbreviation, when named after a person is always capitalized.

Scientists discover this new weird trick

[WallyL]

Diamond manufacturers hate it!

stone - bronze - iron ...

[erapert]

Stone age -> bronze age -> iron age -> steel age -> information age -> carbon age