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Girls' Best Friend Now Manmade

And man's best friend (the Aibo) is made in the lab by Sony. Maybe men can teach their Aibos to fetch diamonds for their girlfriends/wifes!

If they start stamping out cheap but "real" diamonds on an assembly line and selling them in gumball machines for a nickel, and you can't tell them from the mined kind, will the mined kind lose their desirability? The company's president's statement that his manufactured diamonds have "all of the emotional feeling that a mined diamond does" is not a scientific (or well justified) claim.
 
i was reading an article about this in wired a while back, and one expert said the way he could tell the "fake" ones from the "real" ones was that the fake ones were too perfect. sounds like a nice problem to have. ;)
 
This has been done previously.

IIRC, General Electric had pioneered a process of making artificial diamonds and also of introducing impurities in order to make colored diamonds not otherwise found in nature.

After this news came around, DeBeers went around and got General Electric to announce that it will only make diamonds for industrial use.

I expect some heavy convincing of the Boston company's creditors, executives, and other nefarious ways to nip this in the bud.

Evil Diamonds
Evil DeBeers
The Evil that Men do
DeBeers

I think that sapphires or emeralds are rarer than diamonds.
 
Hi hope DeBeers and those crazy civilian-murdering sadist warlords they are funding in Sierra Leone bite the dust, and soon.
 
Yeah, I read about this in...Wired, I think?

DeBeers is really up in arms over it. The spectroscopy can't tell the difference unless you have a frikin' awesome spectrometer. DeBeers is now inscribing their name on all their diamonds to "prove" they are real.

These synthetic diamonds will be essential, though, not to jewelry, but to the processor industry.

Finally, the heir to silicon's current throne can be cheaply obtained...
 
And we've been able to make flawless lab-grown ruby for about $10 a carat for years, but snobs still demand the imperfect, expensive "natural" ones, because the jewelry industry makes them think they should.

Faster, better, cheaper...you will be replaced.
 
Originally posted by Santiago
And we've been able to make flawless lab-grown ruby for about $10 a carat for years, but snobs still demand the imperfect, expensive "natural" ones, because the jewelry industry makes them think they should.

Faster, better, cheaper...you will be replaced.
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Jewelry is a question of perceived value, not actual value. Beauty is subjective and therefore the opinion that diamonds are beautiful is simply a perceived, constructed one.

The perceived value of diamonds has a great deal to do with their rarity. Thus, the construction of the beauty and value of the diamond is weakened by the vast availability of the synthetic sort.

In short, the diamond is defined by the perception of a large number of people, and the introduction of the synthetic diamond is creating an identity crisis, not because of any inherent difference in the physical properties or practical value or looks of the diamond, but an affront to the embedded virtues that make a diamond great in the minds of the masses.
 
I wonder..... if the process becomes commonplace and cheap enough, will that drive the prics of diamonds down? That'd be nice, but kind of pointless. One of the cool things (I though) about owning a diamond would be its value. If anyone can pick one up from the grovery for a few bucks, doesn't the idea of owning it lose its charm?
 
But, the two-month's salary guideline...

But how will a woman know her real worth if not by the value of the ring on her hand?

Imagine if a woman thought she was worth $12,000 only to find out that her husband to be only thought her to be worth $3,000! This is preposterous and will only lead to the dissolution of the equality of exchanging a pricey token for a bride and hefty dowry. A sad day indeed...
 
Too bad plutonium is highly toxic. It is rare and in demand, at least by tinpot dictators and Islamic militants. :eek:
 
I'm glad I found out this was about diamonds...

Was worried there for awhile. :eek:
 
Originally posted by ColoJohnBoy
I wonder..... if the process becomes commonplace and cheap enough, will that drive the prics of diamonds down? That'd be nice, but kind of pointless. One of the cool things (I though) about owning a diamond would be its value. If anyone can pick one up from the grovery for a few bucks, doesn't the idea of owning it lose its charm?
Click to expand...

That's pretty much what I was suggesting in my previous post...However, although they might lose value from a jeweler's point of view, they'll become increasingly important to the microprocessor industry.

But not to worry, because DeBeer's is taking steps to ensure that real diamonds can be distinguished from synthetic ones. Therefore, there will always be a way to tell, and the inherent value of "authentic" diamonds will endure.

That won't matter to the processor industry, which doesn't care whether the fab is manmade or natural, as long as it is nearly flawless and can sustain massive output...And that's where these synthetic diamonds will find their LARGEST market, I imagine.
 
Originally posted by stoid
DeBeers and Microsoft?

Are they run by the same mind? :D
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No. Microsoft has not been alleged to have killed anyone in trying to maintain their market monopoly.

DeBeers has.
 
Originally posted by jayscheuerle
Not to mention the difficulties of running a mining operation out on the 9th planet, where it's apparently as abundant as sodium is on our own planet...
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I don't think the planet Pluto, is made out of plutonium.

Nevermind.

Its clear that some women like shiny trinkets that cost a lot of money to buy for them. That puts a price on their worth to their husband/boyfriend/lover.

If I was a woman, I'd settle for a dual G5. :D
 
Remember the navy ship that was stranded at sea when Windows crashed? Thats one way Microsoft can lead to dead people. :eek:
 
Originally posted by Frohickey
No. Microsoft has not been alleged to have killed anyone in trying to maintain their market monopoly.
Click to expand...
Do frustration-induced suicides count?
 
A pretty interesting process.

This is what i've learned in passed research even before i saw this post.

One thing to consider is that Diamonds have no real value

By real value i mean they are not really affected by economic shifts as Gold or Slilver does. They are totally goverened by those who sell them. Since De Beer's controlls such a large percentage of the diamond industry they pretty much control the price.

Interesting note : De Beers executives cannot set foot on US soil because they will be fed a subpoena as taken from a "price fixing induction case" back in 1994

The status of a diamond is defined by how rare it is, and how hard it is to find/mine

Interesting note : 20 % of the diamonds found are acctually used in jewllery

I can't see this process at all effecting the price of "real" diamonds, because their status will still be defined by how difficult they are to get.

Final note :

These are still real diamonds they are just sinthetically grown - From a smaller diamond to a larger diamond by bonding more carbon atoms. This only expands the size, no bonds are changed.

Synthetic Diamonds are created by taking graphite, and putting it under highpressure. This takes the original Carbon bonds of graphite and forces them to change orientation to share the same characteristic bonds of a diamond.
 
The thing is, people will always find something rare to put into their trinkets and charge an exorbitant price for them--ivory, gold, diamonds, meteorite (yes, they're found in $70,000 watches), etc. In the end, these materials don't have any real value except for the perceived type.
 
Originally posted by topicolo
The thing is, people will always find something rare to put into their trinkets and charge an exorbitant price for them--ivory, gold, diamonds, meteorite (yes, they're found in $70,000 watches), etc. In the end, these materials don't have any real value except for the perceived type.
Click to expand...

This is only partially true. It is correct for the use of items for cosmetic purposes. The same cannot be said of industrial purposes.

Diamonds have a real future in the semiconductor industry, which does not value rarity, but on the contrary, abundance. And perfection as well, which will never be found in nature.

No, there will a tremendous market for this. Not in the high-end jewelry arena, but perhaps in the lower-end (think about it as a couple levels higher than cubic zirconium) and, perhaps more importantly, in computer hardware and other industrial/technological purposes.
 
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