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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."
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.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
'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...
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.
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.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
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.
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.
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.