Diamonds are for a few hours

[Captain Japan]

Mainichi

A model displays her arm coated with a new type of jewelry cosmetic called "Diamond Decollete" in Tokyo. The "Diamond Decollete" is a water-proof, color-lasting spray containing grains of 0.1-carat diamond per can of 60-gram cosmetic liquid.

In thinking out loud here, I find this product difficult to distinguish from the inoculation marks that many Japanese women have on their upper arm.

[GomiGirl]

Well I guess this is a good way to keep selling diamonds.

Diamonds are not a rare gem, in fact they are very common but the perception is that they are rare and hence, the value of them stays high.

That said, I still love diamonds.

[Ketou]

How the LV toting girls will luv this one.

[Taro Toporific]

[Ketou]

Hmm, now that's interesting. Seems like someone is going to make a nice profit on that cost difference!

[kurohinge1]

Well I guess this is a good way to keep selling diamonds.

Diamonds are not a rare gem, in fact they are very common but the perception is that they are rare and hence, the value of them stays high.

That said, I still love diamonds.

What about your own DIAMOND PLANET, GG?

... Meanwhile, another team of scientists theorized that some faraway planets could be mostly carbon, with a thick layer of diamonds hiding under the surface.

Earth, Mars, and Venus are "silicate planets," consisting mostly of silicon-oxygen compounds condensed from a disk of gas orbiting the sun. Carbon planets, though, might form more differently, the scientists said.

In gas with extra carbon or too little oxygen, carbon compounds like carbides and graphite could form instead of silicates, said Marc Kuchner, an astronomer at Princeton University in New Jersey.

Any condensed graphite would then change into diamond under high pressure and potentially form diamond layers. Inside the planets such layers could be several miles thick...

[gomichild]

Please note that I prefer emeralds.

Thank you.

[cliffy]

Please note that I prefer emeralds.

Thank you.

AT what 3,4 times the price of Diamonds per carat? You had better be VERY good girlie

[American Oyaji]

Please note that I prefer emeralds.

Thank you.

Duly Noted

[gomichild]

I'm an excellent girlie - have a small one on my finger now

[FG Lurker]

I first read about synthetic diamond manufacturing in Wired in November 2003. Damn interesting stuff:

The New Diamond Age

Aron Weingarten brings the yellow diamond up to the stainless steel jeweler's loupe he holds against his eye. We are in Antwerp, Belgium, in Weingarten's marbled and gilded living room on the edge of the city's gem district, the center of the diamond universe. Nearly 80 percent of the world's rough and polished diamonds move through the hands of Belgian gem traders like Weingarten, a dealer who wears the thick beard and black suit of the Hasidim.

"This is very rare stone," he says, almost to himself, in thickly accented English. "Yellow diamonds of this color are very hard to find. It is probably worth 10, maybe 15 thousand dollars."

"I have two more exactly like it in my pocket," I tell him.

He puts the diamond down and looks at me seriously for the first time. I place the other two stones on the table. They are all the same color and size. To find three nearly identical yellow diamonds is like flipping a coin 10,000 times and never seeing tails.

"These are cubic zirconium?" Weingarten says without much hope.

"No, they're real," I tell him. "But they were made by a machine in Florida for less than a hundred dollars."

Weingarten shifts uncomfortably in his chair and stares at the glittering gems on his dining room table. "Unless they can be detected," he says, "these stones will bankrupt the industry."

[...]

De Beers Diamond Trading Company. The London-based cartel has monopolized the diamond business for 115 years, forcing out rivals by ruthlessly controlling supply. But the sudden appearance of multicarat, gem-quality synthetics has sent De Beers scrambling. Several years ago, it set up what it calls the Gem Defensive Programme - a none too subtle campaign to warn jewelers and the public about the arrival of manufactured diamonds. At no charge, the company is supplying gem labs with sophisticated machines designed to help distinguish man-made from mined stones.

[...]

In the summer of 2001, Abbaschian told the General that they were finally ready to mass-produce diamonds. There was one last decision to make. Each machine was capable of generating a 3-carat yellow stone every three days (colorless takes longer). Given their scarcity, the price per carat was much higher for yellow diamonds - so much higher, in fact, that only the very wealthy could afford them. Plus, colored diamonds have gotten hot in recent years. (J. Lo's engagement ring? Pink diamond.) Clarke decided that he'd make the biggest splash by bringing yellows to Middle America. He'd compete on both price - charging 10 to 50 percent less than naturals - and style. And, if he succeeded with the yellow stones, he could transition into colorless.

The diamond industry fought back. Early last year, De Beers began shipping improved, even more sensitive DiamondSure machines to labs around the world. Meanwhile, industry groups led by the Jewelers Vigilance Committee have pressured the Federal Trade Commission to force Gemesis to label its stones as synthetic.

The tussle goes to the heart of the marketing problem for Gemesis or any maker of synthetic gems: How will consumers feel about them? The mystique of natural diamonds is anything but rational. Part of the allure is their high cost and supposed rarity. Yet diamonds are plentiful - De Beers maintains vast stockpiles and tightly controls supply.

There's more in the article (full text here) on the Florida ones. But much more interesting is what the next section of the article contains, information on the diamonds made in Boston:

In Antwerp, Van Royen tells me of another threat. There's a rumor of a new, experimental method for growing gem-quality diamonds. The process - chemical vapor deposition - has been used for more than a decade to cover relatively large surfaces with microscopic diamond crystals. The technique transforms carbon into a plasma, which then precipitates onto a substrate as diamond. The problem with the technology has always been that no one could figure out how to grow a single crystal using the method. At least until now, Van Royen says. Apollo Diamond, a shadowy company in Boston, is rumored to be sitting on a single-crystal breakthrough. If true, it represents a new challenge to the industry, since CVD diamonds could conceivably be grown in large bricks that, when cut and polished, would be indistinguishable from natural diamonds. "But nobody has seen them in Antwerp," Van Royen says. "So we don't even know if they are for real."

I take a transparent 35-millimeter film canister from my pocket and put it on the table. Two small diamonds are cushioned on cotton balls inside. "Believe me," I say, "they're for real."

Three days before traveling to Belgium, I had flown to Boston to meet Bryant Linares, president of Apollo Diamond.

[...]

We pull up at a suburban strip mall occupied by a fitness gym and a graphic design company. Linares leads the way into the graphics firm's reception area, which looks normal enough. But when he opens one of the interior doors, I catch a glimpse of a man dressed head to foot in Intel-style clean-room scrubs.

"Welcome to Apollo Diamond," Linares says, waving me inside and quickly shutting the door.

[...]

By January, Apollo plans to start selling them on the jewelry market. But that's just the first step. Robert and Bryant Linares expect to use revenue from the gem trade to fund their company's semiconductor ambitions. Not surprisingly, the diamond industry is hostile to the idea, as the younger Linares discovered four years ago when he attended an industry conference in Prague. He was hoping to find out whether any other researchers - possibly De Beers scientists themselves - had discovered the sweet spot. During a break in the conference, a man approached Linares and told him to be careful. "He said that my father's research was a good way to get a bullet in the head," Linares recalls.

The diamond industry is in fact even more concerned about gems made using chemical vapor deposition than it is about Gemesis stones, though Gemesis poses a more immediate threat. The promise of CVD is that it produces extremely pure crystal. Gemesis diamonds grow in a metal solvent, and tiny particles of those metals get caught in the diamond lattice as it grows. CVD diamond precipitates as nearly 100 percent pure diamond and therefore may not be discernible from naturals, no matter how advanced the detection equipment.

[...]

The price per carat: about $5.

[...]

Back at the Diamond High Council, I open the film canister and shake the Apollo stones onto the table. Van Royen tentatively picks one up with a pair of elongated tweezers and takes it to a microscope. "Unbelievable," he says slowly as he peers through the lens. "May I study it?" I agree to let him keep the gems overnight. When we meet the next morning in the lobby of the High Council, Van Royen looks tired. He admits to staying up almost all night scrutinizing the stones. "I think I can identify it," he says hopefully. "It's too perfect to be natural. Things in nature, they have flaws. The growth structure of this diamond is flawless."

De Beers sucks. I'd love to see them driven out of business by synthetic diamonds that can't be told from natural ones. Diamonds are not at all a rare stone -- it's only marketing and tight control that makes them expensive.

[puargs]

I too would like to see diamond companies get a huge one up the rear. Those assholes. People like my mother say things like "I care if there are new synthetic ones, because that means the real ones don't mean as much!" Well, they never *did* mean anything, they're not exactly hard to find. Plus, DeBeers makes a killing of those things, considering they're mostly mined in third world countries by workers making god knows how little money (I've heard stories on NPR about workers willing to smuggle those babies out through their less commonly seen holes, and that is not saying much for the pay)...

Rich fatcat monopoly overturned by honest working folks? Diamonds for everyone? Who's the loser there?

[FG Lurker]

The diamond industry has only about 20 years left in its current form.

The fact that perfect multi-carat stones can be made is now known, and a patent has been filed... Patents only last for 20 years though. After that it'll become a free-for-all, much like generic drugs are after drug patents expire.

Five bucks a carat to make absolutely flawless diamonds. Amazing.

I've always preferred sapphires myself anyway.

[cliffy]

I've always preferred sapphires myself anyway.

I am curious...what color/s and how about party stones? I am picking them up easy round here for free. The cutting costs are horrendus though

[FG Lurker]

I've always preferred sapphires myself anyway.

I am curious...what color/s and how about party stones? I am picking them up easy round here for free. The cutting costs are horrendus though

I like pale blue best, especially in earrings. Red is also cool but very rare as I'm sure you know.

They're all nice though: pink, green, yellow, orange...

Most sapphires come from Australia, right? Must be nice getting them free!! Even in the rough they can be very nice...