For those concerned about distinguishing 'natural' from 'synthetic' diamonds (not really that meaningful IMO other than maintaining artificial scarcity of a luxury/status item), there's a simple fix: use atmospheric carbon as the building material. Atmospheric CO2 has trace amounts of carbon-14 (~1 per 10^12 C atoms) and the resulting beta-decay-mode emissions can be easily easily detected.
Practically, this means the methane fed into the chemical vapor deposition process has to be extracted from biogas (say, a chicken manure digester) or directly synthesized from air and hydrogen (Sabatier process). This feedstock will contain the same trace amount of carbon-14 as the atmosphere and will be incorporated into the resulting diamond.
This seems like such an obvious thing to do for various reasons. It allows the (increasingly irrelevant) natural diamond industry to easily distinguish between their product and synthetic products. Not only that, there's probably a huge market for such 'atmospheric diamonds' among the people interested in green products, or tech products. Finally, while the cost of synthesizing methane feedstock is still quite a bit higher than just using natural gas, that's negligible relative to the cost of the final product and shouldn't be a factor.
> This seems like such an obvious thing to do for various reasons. It allows the (increasingly irrelevant) natural diamond industry to easily distinguish between their product and synthetic products.
Surely we would want the opposite? I..e for someone to unload a ton of lab-grown diamonds indistinguishable from "natural" ones, to once and for all kill the racket run by De Beers and friend.
They’d have to drive the cost down to barely above minimally viable real costs and scale larger than debeers to accommodate the induced demand of dirt cheap diamonds proliferating through the market. Swarovski/cz/generic translucent stone market’s would also be crushed by this.
> Each carat of mined diamond has a footprint of over 100kg of carbon dioxide and over 500kg of greenhouse gases in total.
The report by Imperial College London Consultants, cited by Sky Diamond, highlights the environmental and climate costs of mining so-called precious stones:
One more reason to ensure that synthetic diamonds cannot be identified or differentiated as such, given the high environmental impact of extracting that carbon allotrope from the ground.
Let's hope this fad of "natural" transparent carbon crystals die quickly, as aluminum as a rare metal did. Its extraction, transformation and distribution channels deserve to quickly die.
The mind boggles at the amount of resources spent on trying to distinguish stuff dug out from the ground from stuff made in a lab, and "educating" people in this process.
It is such a shame when a person's shiny rock is ever so slightly shinier than those that cost lives to dig out of dirt.
If you take a long hard look at the overall economy, well, we waste a lot of time and energy on frivolous things. All in the name of supposedly making ourselves feel better. Which of those are actually important, and which of those are not? Who is to judge?
Some people will only be happy riding actual jet skis, where others will be happy riding one in a video game, which uses comparatively fewer resources. Should we outlaw or more severely regulate actual jet skis? Ditto for other activities (horse riding vs Red Dead Redemption 2 or Breath of the Wild).
Just for the record, I'd like to see everyone getting out there in the real world riding bicycles... but I'm not prepared to legislate that as the preferred outdoor activity.
And the same argument can be made for lots of things, from suborbital launches to gigantic art projects, to suburban cities vs. high-density walkable cities.
We could actually raise up everyone's living standards and have them all work less hours per week with some attitude adjustment, commonsense regulations and reorienting of our national priorities. I don't know when that's going to happen though.
Hey, quick question, I just noticed the subtitle of Diamond Age is "A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer" - are there actually illustrations in the book that I'd be missing if I bought the Audiobook rather than a printed copy?
"A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer" is a device (smart book for educating) that was created by a character in a book. The book itself it not illustrated
not sure about the relative rarity, but De Beers did/does artificially limit available stock to keep prices up. If you read really anything about them, you'll see that market manipulation was core to their business model from the start.
This hasn’t been true for 20 years. “The DeBeers monopoly” has become the go to argument for Reddit and sadly this far more educated forum. DeBeers isn’t even the biggest diamond producer any more, Alrosa is (Russian government company). Alrosa and DeBeers together are around 80% of production, so DeBeers no longer has pricing power.
The reason for this - the discovery of diamond mines outside the DeBeers stronghold of Southern Africa - Russia, Canada, Australia.
DeBeers used to sell their diamonds on a take it or leave it style. Cutters could take their sale price or not, but a “no” essentially put yourself out of business.
Now rough diamonds are mostly sold via auctions. There’s about an auction every 1-2 weeks across all the miners, so there’s always an opportunity for cutters to buy supply, and prices are out in the public.
"DeBeers controls the diamond market" is a myth that won't die.
As an aside, I've noticed that circle of people who love chiming in about diamonds tends to paradoxically overlap with the circle of people who think crypto is awesome despite the "vibe" of the two being extremely similar.
I've found it best to just let them rage against their chosen machine.
> "DeBeers controls the diamond market" is a myth that won't die.
DeBeers was a monopoly that wouldn't die for 90 years longer than this upstart myth has existed. Compare to Christmas, come back and comment in 2000 years, and we'll just see if it's really "a myth that won't die." I doubt it'll make it past 2030. You should really be more cautious declaring an eternal myth so prematurely.
The diamond industry generates about $110bn a year (although most of that isn't shiny gemstones). You can see why companies might be desperately clinging on to that...
My understanding is that de beers created most of the luxury diamond market in the first place.
Prior to a particularly successful de beers advertising campaign diamonds were not all that associated with wedding rings. now, it is most often the expected thing.
> extraction, transformation and distribution channels deserve to quickly die.
Why? Have any reasons for your belief? There’s a reason diamonds are expensive and it’s not “artificial scarcity” as the uneducated people here like to claim. It’s because people want the diamonds and are willing to pay the expensive prices!
The description in your link has the thickness:
Freestanding unpolished diamond single crystal synthesized by heteroepitaxy on Ir/YSZ/Si(001). The thickness of the disc is 1.6 ± 0.25 mm and its weight is 155 carat.
n = 1, but my now-wife was and still is very happy with her Brilliant Earth lab diamond engagement ring. They do also sell natural diamonds, so be sure to select lab diamonds in the UI though.
Practically, this means the methane fed into the chemical vapor deposition process has to be extracted from biogas (say, a chicken manure digester) or directly synthesized from air and hydrogen (Sabatier process). This feedstock will contain the same trace amount of carbon-14 as the atmosphere and will be incorporated into the resulting diamond.
This seems like such an obvious thing to do for various reasons. It allows the (increasingly irrelevant) natural diamond industry to easily distinguish between their product and synthetic products. Not only that, there's probably a huge market for such 'atmospheric diamonds' among the people interested in green products, or tech products. Finally, while the cost of synthesizing methane feedstock is still quite a bit higher than just using natural gas, that's negligible relative to the cost of the final product and shouldn't be a factor.
Time to go write up a business plan, isn't it?
P.S. full paper here:
https://sci-hub.se/10.1038/srep44462