Scientists at De Beers Fight the Growing Threat of Man-Made Diamonds (wsj.com) 365
"In the past few years, lab-grown diamonds have become indistinguishable from natural diamonds to the naked eye..." reports the Wall Street Journal. This creates a problem for diamond-mining company De Beers. HughPickens.com writes:
While synthetics make up just a fraction of the market, they have growing appeal to younger buyers -- a headache for mine owners, who are under pressure to cut supply and lower prices, because traders, cutters and polishers are struggling to profit amid a credit squeeze and languishing jewelry sales... "Martin Roscheisen, chief executive of Diamond Foundry Inc., a San Francisco synthetic-diamond producer with a capacity of 24,000 carats, says he believes nearly all diamonds consumers purchase will be man-made in a few decades," reports the Journal. "To counter the threat, last year De Beers helped launch a trade association with other producers to market the attraction of natural diamonds. It also started marketing a new, cheap detector called PhosView, that uses ultraviolet light to detect lab-grown stones that quickly screens tiny synthetic diamonds.
It always seemed like a waste of money to me. After all, it's literally raining diamonds on Saturn.
It always seemed like a waste of money to me. After all, it's literally raining diamonds on Saturn.
OR! (Score:5, Insightful)
Hopefully before then, the main threat will become the consumer realizing they're a massive waste of money.
Re:OR! (Score:4, Informative)
If generics significantly disrupt the market, then the prices will drop way way down and they won't be a massive waste of money, at worst a small waste of money, and at best a very very durable shiny that lasts a long time and is cheap.
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What "divorce revolution"? The divorce rate has been dropping steadily since the 1970s.
What exactly does this even *mean*?
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Do you want to be "forever alone" or happy with a wife that loves you? You will eventually get old and be unable to obtain dates if you do not take the plunge.
While much of what you say is true, this isn't. I know a number of older men who have no problem getting dates; after their divorce they suddenly have discovered that the are very much in demand.
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As a married man let me just say that any woman who insists you flush several month pay down the toilet to buy a small piece of transparent stone as a marriage gift (rather than, say, a nice holiday or a down-payment on a house) is a person to be avoid. There's nothing wrong with pretty things per se but if a woman insists you spend huge sums on same then that is a serious warning sign to be ignored at the cost of your future happiness.
Back on topic: it will be interesting to see if the diamond ring == mar
Good. (Score:5, Insightful)
That is all I have to say about this.
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Yeah, I think this is really great! I hope the prices drop far enough in a couple decades that it can be used as a building material.
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I think I can say a bit more.
If Beers is actually concerned about the "blood diamonds" they don't want people buying, then these 'fake' diamonds gaining popularity is actually the best thing that could happen.
Granted, their own company will go under unless they just go ahead and transform into a synthetic diamond manufacturer, but that's a small a small price to pay.
The only reason the stupid rocks have the value they do is caused by marketing anyway.
Re:Good. (Score:5, Insightful)
Why anyone would spend thousands of dollars on a ring is beyond me anyways. Take all of the money you would have spent and put it towards a house or if that's not an issue, spend it traveling. Experiences together are worth more than a piece of carbon.
Re:Good. (Score:4, Funny)
They can measure that in massacarat.
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Why anyone would spend thousands of dollars on a ring is beyond me anyways. Take all of the money you would have spent and put it towards a house or if that's not an issue, spend it traveling. Experiences together are worth more than a piece of carbon.
There is a lot of societal momentum behind the diamond ring, or at least in the ring itself. People like wedding bands and even my very practical brothers got wedding bands. They bought a nice rock for the wife but they didn't, at least in my mind, go overboard on the expense. One brother, a mechanical engineer, got a wedding band made of titanium or something for himself, it's not gold and cost less than a nice dinner out.
You can try to do away with the ring but I believe you are going to have a lot of
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I don't know, I'm not married. Sure, the diamonds are on the engagement rings I guess. A bit of internet research tells me that some cultures have the jewel on the engagement ring and others on the wedding ring, with a plain gold (or other noble metal) band for the other.
Now that I think about it my older brother gave his wife a diamond ring for engagement and the wedding bands were relatively plain gold bands.
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Their business model is to sell proof of having spent lots of money.
So really they are not worried about the quality of synthetic diamonds, they are worried about not being able to accurately judge the price.
It's kinda like Ferrari cars. They aren't too worried that a Nissan GTR is cheaper because people who buy Ferraris aren't really looking for value for money or an equivalent product. It would only be a problem if the GTR looked identical and people were fooled into thinking it was a Ferrari.
Synthetic di
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I never understood the attraction to diamonds.
I see them as a means of concentrating a large sum of money in to a small package in order to show off how much one has.
I find women that flaunt large diamonds as superficial and something to avoid. Most of the time, they want them to display "how much someone cares about them" (by spending a lot of money on them).
No thanks.
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They can also be a means of concentrating a large sum of money in to a small package in order to show off how much money one used to have, before they spent it all on diamonds.
Not the real thing? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's so much more romantic to give diamonds that were mined by people on subsistence level wages in terrible conditions and then used to make massive profits by a parasitic organization that is dedicated to preserving a monopoly through artificial scarcity. What's "real" when the end result is the same, or perhaps even purer when man-made?
Diamonds are not as rare as some other gemstones. It's only the massive market manipulation that gives them their value.
The end of DeBeers cannot come soon enough.
Re:Not the real thing? (Score:5, Informative)
I think they should absolutely be free to market/etc the terms "natural/mined" diamond vs "man made/lab grown" diamond, but "real" vs "fake" is incorrect and should be hammered on by agencies who regulate advertising and commerce.
Cubic zirconia is a "fake" diamond if it's sold as such. Man made diamonds are real, end of story.
Re:Not the real thing? (Score:5, Insightful)
+1 !!!
Man-made diamonds ARE diamonds. They look the same, act the same, have the same structure, and it is impossible to even tell them apart from mined diamonds without very expensive and specialized equipment. They are not "fake" they are just not mined.
I don't understand people's obsession with this crystallized carbon, but pretending that mined ones are somehow superior or worth more seems just completely irrational.
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Source matters, it may not make sense but a doodle by Da Vinci is worth a lot more than a doodle by me even if they have the same aesthetic appeal.
If people perceive precious then they are by definition precious, people don't always make sense.
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The point people here are making is that the perception of value you are referring to is based on a persistent and blatantly untruthful propaganda campaign brought to the masses by DeBeers. DaVinci was a singularly valuable artist/inventor/engineer, his doodles are valued because of who he was and what he did. Diamonds are valued because some marketers came up with an extremely successful campaign, not due to an inherently superior value of these particular stones.
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just completely irrational.
And there you have summed up marketing in 3 simple words...
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I don't understand people's obsession with this crystallized carbon, but pretending that mined ones are somehow superior or worth more seems just completely irrational.
It's easy, let me help.
In my right hand I have a real diamond, found and taken from a mine by a hard worker providing for his family. God created the diamond, mine, and you and me. Fred over there made the diamond in my left hand. This was when he was at work only slightly drunk after beating his wife at the time -- but never mind that. He can make more imitations that are just as good as the original.
Now your money (at least in the US -- at least it USED to) has "In God We Trust." If hung-over Fre
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It's so much more romantic to give diamonds that were mined by people on subsistence level wages in terrible conditions and then used to make massive profits by a parasitic organization that is dedicated to preserving a monopoly through artificial scarcity.
May not be romantic, but it certainly seems like a good fit for the institution we call "marriage".
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A touch over-blown, but certainly DeBeers have done a great job of driving up the price of their product through damned effective marketing. Kind-of like Apple. Now, personally I wouldn't buy an Apple product (had a Mac ; didn't like it), but I recognise their marketing skill. And apparently, their hardware is pretty good too, if over-priced.
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Artificial scarcity and artificial demand. The traditional wedding ring is a simple gold ring. Has been for centuries if not millenia. De Beers paid Hollywood to promote the concept of a diamond engagement ring in movies in the early 1900s. It worked, and it's now ingrained into the public consciousness that an engagement ring is (incorrectly) a diamond ring.
So you've got an organizati
Fuck DeBeers? (Score:5, Insightful)
Very good (Score:5, Informative)
Diamonds aren't particularly rare, the only thing that makes them valuable is that DeBeers has been holding a very tight near-monopoly, so there's no free market.
Their operation is a reality version of the cartoon view of capitalism promoted by leftists for years. Every bad thing you can think of, they do, from the monopoly, exploitation of workers, callous disregard for humanity, and on and on. Capitalism and western society left this sort of bullcrap behind 100 years ago, but not these bastards. Anything that breaks their hold will be welcome from all sides of the spectrum,
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What is worse than De Beers, the idiots that buy those diamonds, seriously sucked in and stupid. Diamonds are forever, no, stupid is forever.
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Actually, stupid dies usually after about 80 years, though there are a few outliers that live into the 100s. To be more correct, true stupid probably dies well before 80.
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Go take a look at an auction house - not necessarily Christies or Sothebys, just a normal house that sells off the estates of well-to-do-but-not-insanely-wealthy people. Read their sales results for jewelry. It sells for at most half the price you'd pay at a retailer.
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I can't bring myself to care too much about the purchasers. They know what they are getting and how much it costs, and whether it is worth it to them.
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> the median diamond grade is 0.25 carats/tonne of rock mined. Finding a 1-carat gem-quality stone within that is really rare given that the median size
The only use I'm aware of for a 1 carat diamond is to hang around a naive person's neck.
Epitaxially layered diamond sheets are fantastically useful. Diamond dust is a fine abrasive and is common used in sharpening plates. Correctly cut small diamonds are handy in diamond anvils. Industry is well served with the available diamonds, but they're expensive. A
What does that even mean? (Score:5, Insightful)
Diamond Foundry Inc., a San Francisco synthetic-diamond producer with a capacity of 24,000 carats
A day? An hour? Per year? Their office safe can't hold more than that? How does this provide any sort of perspective?
Re:What does that even mean? (Score:5, Informative)
From pressure to obscene profit (Score:5, Insightful)
"...a headache for mine owners, who are under pressure to cut supply and lower prices, because traders, cutters and polishers are struggling to profit...
When the retail end of this entire market reflects rather obscene profit margins, the real problem is rather glaring.
Sorry, but with the collusive pricing actions of the entire industry on the retail end of things, they are likely getting what they deserve. Pure unadulterated greed created these alternate products, and for valid reasons.
so many "attractions" to choose from (Score:4, Informative)
And "the attraction" would be the blood of Africans that is spilled in obtaining them? The horrible working conditions that they are mined under? The environmental destruction that is wreaked by digging them up? Please help me out here, there are so many "attractions" to choose from.
the best of Artificial Scarcity karma (Score:2)
No surprises here, given that debeers et al's business model is based on one of the silliest examples of artificial scarcity. Of course they feel threatened.
Diamonds are more meaningful this way (Score:2)
I mean, the more childrens' hands have been cut off from warlords mining these things means the love is greater.
"Diamonds Are Forever" (Score:2)
Yeah? Let's see one survive a house fire.
House fire: 550C diamond 700C-1700C (Score:5, Informative)
A house fire produces temperatures up to about 550C. The surface of a diamond will oxidize, necesitating polishing, between 700C and 1700C. With normal oxygen levels it's about 700C, in an oxygen-depleted environment such as a fire diamonds can be unharmed up to 1700C.
RIP (Rot In Pieces) De Beers (Score:3)
believes nearly all diamonds consumers purchase will be man-made in a few decades
What, just because they're cheaper and of higher quality, and don't involve unethical and environmentally unfriendly mining operations, and as a bonus reduce the money earned by a nasty cartel?
Slashdot nerd (Score:3)
Not entirely made up (Score:3)
It's not nothing to do with cost (Score:3)
Why not put the money into a nicer house if it's just a statement of how much I'm willing to spend. Something that you live with daily.
Parallels to other industries (Score:3)
DeBeer's behavior parallels other established interests we have read about recently such as taxi "cartels" trying to suppress upstarts Uber & Lyft, or hotel "cartels" trying to suppress VRBO & Airbnb. Jump ahead 50 years. I would wager that taxis, hotels, and natural diamonds will have lost their stranglehold to the likes of Uber, Airbnb, and synthetic diamonds. Adapt or die.
Why Engagement Rings Are a Scam - Adam Ruins Every (Score:3, Informative)
Yeah, we should be really concerned for the interests of diamond companies [youtube.com].
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I love this soooo much (Score:4, Insightful)
Then they try to tell the public that synthetic is somehow bad.
I am not a fan of margarine but this sounds like when the butter lobby managed to do things like prevent margarine from being coloured yellow after an unsuccessful attempt to get it banned.
I am willing to bet that what is coming is one of two things, or both. First is that you must label a synthetic diamond as synthetic. Or they will try to force people to label synthetic diamonds as something else entirely(as if they weren't chemically a diamond).
The next is a campaign of "fake means he doesn't love you"
Then it will turn out that they will go after any jewelers who cut, sell, design, or anything that anything to do with synthetics. Basically the rule will be, if you sale synthetics then you don't get to sell the real thing.
But when all this is over just look at what happened to the natural pearl industry after cultured pearls took over. There was a brief orgy of resistance, and then it all fell apart.
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Your analogy is terrible. Margarine is nothing like butter, margarine is a completely unnatural product that wreaks havoc on a person's health who mistakes it for a food product and ingests it. Butter, on the other hand is a natural product whose fats are an excellent source of nutrition. Yeah, some people are sensitive to the proteins but for most people, butter is a great source of nutrition. Margarine is gray death in a tub.
Your analogy is terrible because a synthetic diamond is very much a diamond, w
Aluminum (Score:2)
All I have to say is... (Score:2)
Diamonds are not an investment (Score:3)
De Beers and jewelers try to convince us that diamonds are an investment and that they hold their value. Completely and utterly false. I remember this great article from years ago:
http://www.theatlantic.com/mag... [theatlantic.com]
(turn off javascript to view the article so the anti-ad blocker won't pop up... it's just not safe to disable ad blocking).
The entire demand for diamonds was created by De Beers. It's a marketing scam.
For years ... (Score:2)
I've been saying for years (probably could find my posts saying as much on Slashdot, were I less lard-assed) that there are two things that are going to screw DeBeers utterly and completely.
1. Diamond is a really quite nice semiconductor. Lots of good things about it.
2. The semiconductor industry produces single crystal ingots that dwarf a typical natural stone by, what, three orders of magnitude, at five to seven nines of purity. They know how to make big, ultra-pure crystals in vast quantities much, muc
Last few years? (Score:3)
In the past few years, lab-grown diamonds have become indistinguishable from natural diamonds to the naked eye...
This looks suspiciously like a story [wired.com] I read in Wired magazine 13 years ago. Lab grown diamonds have been indistinguishable from natural diamonds for a long time now. The price of diamond should be a lot lower than it is, even without the competition from artificial diamonds, but De Beers has been allowed to abuse their monopoly position to stockpile the output of their mines and control the flow into the market to maintain artificial scarcity, and threaten not to supply jewellers who work with artificial diamonds.
Re:mountains of diamonds (Score:5, Insightful)
And have what are essentially slaves to dig up new ones.
Re:mountains of diamonds (Score:5, Insightful)
And have what are essentially slaves to dig up new ones.
Perhaps synthetic diamonds should be marketed as "cruelty-free diamonds". As far as synthetic vs. natural -- if it's made up of carbon atoms arranged in a face-centered cubic crystal structure called a diamond lattice (to paraphrase Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]), it's a fucking diamond. All the work of digging up "natural" stones, etc ... doesn't make them better, just more expensive. Of course, I'm sure The Diamond Industry will disagree (and have me killed). :-)
Re:mountains of diamonds (Score:5, Insightful)
If they hire some good marketers they can market them as 100% guaranteed cruelty free diamonds with little to no environmental impact (or at least less than digging them out of the ground), and on top of that 100% pure with no imperfections.
Re:mountains of diamonds (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:mountains of diamonds (Score:5, Insightful)
The demand is there. I looked at diamond prices last month, and "cultured" diamonds cost more than natural diamonds, for similar C4 (clarity, cut, carat, color). I was planning to buy a cultured diamond, specifically because of the environmental and human rights aspects, but I was put off by the prices. So I bought my wife a new Macbook Pro instead. Working conditions in Chinese factories are certainly better than in African mines.
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I'm sorry but name for me just one majority-black nation (or hell, even a city) that is a pleasant, safe, prosperous place to live. Hell, do you know the history of Haiti? It had a prosperous mostly agrarian/plantation economy with relatively safe cities and farms, public sanitation, well established law. This is when the French were in control. Then the blacks intercepted a shipment of muskets and revolted. They quickly took control of a "made" nation! It went to shit soon after and has never recovered.
You come so close but can't see the forest for the trees.
That is, you basically outline the problem with colonialism and the extraction of resources from colonial lands and the socioeconomics of decolonization and the best you can come up with is that "Blacks just can't organize peacefully at those scales"?.
The effect of European colonization of black-majority lands and the socioeconomic problems that result from post-colonial conditions where foreign individuals and powers own the resources of those decolo
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Okay, I see you are able to be reasonable about this. So I have a few questions/observations.
The Native Americans and the Jews have also been victims of the most horrible forms of colonialism, institutional and interpersonal racism, or both. Why are they not topping the charts for violent crime like the blacks? Yes Margaret Sanger (Planned Parenthood's origins) was a twisted bitch to be sure, but no state actor has seriously tried to exterminate the blacks. This has happened to both the N.As and the Jew
Re:mountains of diamonds (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:mountains of diamonds (Score:4, Interesting)
I notice that you didn't include India as a former colony, or the African colonies. Here is another alternate hypothesis. British culture is racist and genocidal and in some countries it invaded, it managed to exterminate the natives, creating in the process a homogeneous society, that can develop easier. French or Spanish invaders stopped killing the locals when they surrendered, and mixed with them, creating less cohesive societies, with different backgrounds and ways. It's just an hypothesis. See how well it checks with reality as compared with yours.
Re:mountains of diamonds (Score:5, Insightful)
It is only "undeclared" by default. I have a prenup with a specific QoS guarantee. For each day that she breaches her contractual responsibility, I can legally keep 3% of my monthly income for my personal use.
That you pulled this off is unusual. The difficulty most men face is that women act like a collective guild staffed by shrewd bargainers who understand collective bargaining. Most women would leave you before accepting those terms. Even if they loved you.
A marriage without a prenup is inherently unfair. Your wife can compel you to financially support her, while you get nothing in return. So instead of letting your state legislators decide how your marriage will work, you and your spouse should decide that for yourselves.
And if children are involved, you will quickly find out that family courts hate men by default. The woman wins automatically in any sort of custody dispute, unless there is some exceptional circumstance (you have video proof + multiple witnesses that she is a crack dealer, or something like that). And the concept of alimony is something the feminists themselves would have eliminated on the grounds that it is insulting, if they had integrity. It once served a useful purpose, back when women did not work outside the home and had no real way to earn an honest independent living.
Alimony = the concept that a woman has a "right" to "get used to" the financial lifestyle you provided, a right that continues after she leaves you. Treating women as equals would mean eliminating the concept altogether, or having courts force a divorced woman to render sexual favors to her ex-husband as long as he keeps up his payments because that is the lifestyle that *he* got used to.
Oddly enough the feminists aren't eager to address the blatant sexual discrimination that is Selective Service (military draft) either. It's as though they want all the privileges of men but none of the burdens. That's hardly striving for equality.
Re:mountains of diamonds (Score:5, Funny)
She gets 90%. The government gets 40% or more in taxes. Where does that leave you?
Screwed. Isn't that the point of this arrangement?
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Actually, slavery as an economic institution is interesting.
Slaves are efficient in situations where the cost of freedom and free workers is high; however, they're not exactly free. Raising a slave-child requires feeding and caring for something that does nothing useful for over a decade; while kidnapping a new slave from far away is a wasteful and expensive exercise. Adult slaves are useful, but must be fed and cared for; they become less-useful when sick, injured, and exhausted, and then require repl
Re:mountains of diamonds (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:mountains of diamonds (Score:4, Informative)
They aren't mutually exclusive. "Cruelty-free" natural diamonds already exist from mines in places like Canada [wikipedia.org] and Australia with decent environmental, safety, and labour laws. That's why sometimes they brand them differently.
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Reminds me of that bitter joke Rod Stewart said a few years ago. "Instead of getting married again, I'll find I woman I don't like and by her a house."
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And have what are essentially slaves to dig up new ones.
Perhaps synthetic diamonds should be marketed as "cruelty-free diamonds". As far as synthetic vs. natural -- if it's made up of carbon atoms arranged in a face-centered cubic crystal structure called a diamond lattice (to paraphrase Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]), it's a fucking diamond. All the work of digging up "natural" stones, etc ... doesn't make them better, just more expensive. Of course, I'm sure The Diamond Industry will disagree (and have me killed). :-)
oooh vegan-safe diamonds!
Re:mountains of diamonds (Score:5, Insightful)
The difference between synthetic vs natural diamonds is exactly the same as between ice you get from putting water into your freezer vs that hauled from far-away mountains. The latter is expensive and dirty. If you want, you can put dirt into your synthetic diamonds too!
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It's worse - natual diamonds have imperfections and impurities. So synthetic diamonds are, by any measure, better.
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It's worse - natural diamonds have imperfections and impurities. So synthetic diamonds are, by any measure, better.
On the other hand, imperfections and impurities make them unique, some impurities give them color -- but "synthetic" (man-made) could be doped too. Those things can make "natural" (or mined) diamonds "better" in another sense.
Re:mountains of diamonds (Score:5, Interesting)
It should be possible to introduce impurities into a lab grown diamond to create patterns based on DNA, or a fingerprint, or hell, an RSA public key. Then they'd be unique in a more meaningful way than natural imperfections.
Re:mountains of diamonds (Score:5, Interesting)
I just spent 15 minutes browsing "Diamond Foundry", one of the places that makes synthetics. They aren't cheap - but they do seem to be cheaper than natural diamonds, by 40% or so. Anyways, none of their synthetics are flawless. Cut, clarity, or inclusions - none are perfect in all 3. There are some that are supposed to have no flaws you can see without being a gemologist, for around 10k for a big one, but even a lab can't guarantee perfection it seems. Tiny differences in vibration, in the feed nozzles, flaws and contaminants in the production chamber - apparently the process is not yet perfected.
With that said, it might be in 20 more years. There is talk of some day being able to make synthetic diamonds so large and flawless and in such vast quantities that they can be used as microchip wafers. A side effect of putting billions into it for the mass production of microchip wafers would probably be diamonds that are far superior to natural diamonds for less than a tenth of the cost.
Re:mountains of diamonds (Score:5, Informative)
I'm just curious, would diamond wafers offer any serious advantages over current silicon? Heat conduction, maybe?
Long version: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1369702107703498 [sciencedirect.com]
Short version:
Diamond promises to be superior in most properties that are important for electronic components.
Re:mountains of diamonds (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not even the digging up of natural stones that makes them expensive. De Beers grabs just about every source of natural diamonds that they can and stores them away. By limiting the supply, they can drive prices up. If all of the diamonds in De Beers storehouses were to go on the market, the price of diamonds would drop.
De Beers can't buy up the supply of synthetic diamonds, though. Any lab anywhere can get the equipment and start churning out synthetic diamonds. And whereas natural stones might be of varying quality, synthetics can be perfect every time.
De Beers is a monopolistic company that is suddenly finding itself facing competition. As such, they are reacting as monopolistic companies usually do - not by competing with a better product but by trying to shut down or shout down their new competition.
Re: (Score:2)
Suddenly? It has known of the threat of synthetic diamonds for over thirty years.
Re:mountains of diamonds (Score:5, Informative)
And have what are essentially slaves to dig up new ones.
Perhaps synthetic diamonds should be marketed as "cruelty-free diamonds". As far as synthetic vs. natural -- if it's made up of carbon atoms arranged in a face-centered cubic crystal structure called a diamond lattice (to paraphrase Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]), it's a fucking diamond. All the work of digging up "natural" stones, etc ... doesn't make them better, just more expensive. Of course, I'm sure The Diamond Industry will disagree (and have me killed). :-)
The De Beers cartel has certainly put a lot of effort into controlling the diamond market so you may want to keep a low profile.
The Atlantic magazine's excellent article from 1982 enlightened my younger self as to the utter scam that is the diamond industry
http://www.theatlantic.com/mag... [theatlantic.com]
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I was going to post a link to the Atlantic article but decided to check if someone already had. Thanks!
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Every diamond is a blood diamond (Score:4, Insightful)
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That'd be some impressively high-skilled slave labor. Probably cheaper just to hire someone...
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In the end, it's all mere carbon (Score:3)
Synthetic diamonds could be an important semiconductor. I wish the DeBeers monopoly would end already via cheap synthetic diamonds instead of remaining and blocking important research. Nobody is going to carry around a detector. Man made diamonds are better: at least you know they're not used to fun wars in Africa or dug up by what are essentially slaves.
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I heard there are diamonds are the size of watermelons (imagine that!) way down in the earth of the high pressure and temperature. As they make their way to the surface over the millions or whatever year they get broken up into much smaller pieces. Where they are elevated are in certain areas such as Africa, however, I heard there is a region in Russia (though doubtful because Soviets would have used diamonds to disrupt capitalists).
I don't think anyone has moutains of diamonds though sounds like a good s
Re:mountains of diamonds (Score:5, Interesting)
Nice shilling, but very much not true.
They have some competition, yes.
You if you read, just above, ' a headache for mine owners, who are under pressure to cut supply and lower prices'
cutting supply is almost exactly how the prices have been kept at the stupid level they are these days.
Diamonds are among the MOST common of the gemstones, and about the only reason for their pricing was cunning marketing and supply control..
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Depends what you mean by "gemstone". Some people consider amethyst a gemstone and some do not. Almost no one would call an agate a gemstone, but rather a semi-precious stone (or similar). There is no right or wrong answer here.
My wife's grandfather was in the jewelry and gemstone business, and bequeathed her some beautiful specimens, on display around our house. Often guests say: "Oh, I love your crystals!" "No, they are rocks." To her (and her grandfather), amethyst and agate and tourmaline, etc. wer
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Re:mountains of diamonds (Score:5, Funny)
' a headache for diamond mine owners, who are under pressure
If they were under enough pressure, they could turn coal into diamonds.
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Diamonds are among the MOST common of the gemstones, and about the only reason for their pricing was cunning marketing and supply control..
Part of the cost is also that it takes a lot of training, experience and tools to cut diamonds, and especially at the right angles to catch the light, and to not highlight inherent flaws. Diamonds are exceptionally hard, and with the tools needed to cut them, fairly brittle. The sheer amount of work and risk of ruining the stone adds significantly to the cost. Even for synthetic diamonds.
That said, diamonds make the best heat sinks. That's why I want the synthetic diamond industry to succeed.
Re:mountains of diamonds (Score:5, Informative)
All gem grade materials are rare, composing just a tiny fraction of the earth. Diamonds are no exception to this, but among gems, diamonds are actually the most common.
Re: (Score:2)
Um, not really:
http://www.theatlantic.com/mag... [theatlantic.com]
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, shiny rectangles with a fruit logo are much better.
Re: (Score:2)
Colorless is one end of the spectrum. The fancies, the red, blue and even solid yellow ones can cost even more. This is another opportunity for synthetic diamonds.