Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

De Beers admits defeat over man-made diamonds

money.cnn.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 455 posts

Re: De Beers admits defeat over man-made diamonds

#11

Post by ocdtrekkie »

Interestingly enough, this starts to bring up questions that have previously only been super active in science fiction circles, particularly, Star Trek: If you can perfectly recreate something down to the molecular level, what actually has value? (Assuming, someday, that synthetic versions are excessively cheap, in Star Trek's case.)

If you can replicate cooked food perfectly, will people still claim that "real" food, grown, slaughtered, and cooked, is "better" or tastes "more authentic", despite no technical difference?

Synthetic diamonds could, in fact, be in every way "better" (though hilariously, De Beers suggests a synthetic diamond "may not be forever"), but I won't be surprised if authentic diamonds remain the "real ones" long term. (After all, as we know, diamonds actually have no real value, it's all marketing.)

Re: De Beers admits defeat over man-made diamonds

#12

Post by gruez »

kregasaurusrex wrote: post #2

This is great news for scientific research- diamonds for experimental purposes are a huge market that's impeded by their artificially high cost. From a material standpoint there's a multitude of uses for them- ranging from use in CERN's particle detectors for their high optical clarity, to creating nanodiamond transport mechanisms for drugs because of their resilience to microcellular activity. By creating a mass mar…

>This is great news for scientific research- diamonds for experimental purposes are a huge market that's impeded by their artificially high cost

is this really the case? AFAIK industrial diamonds are quite cheap. if anything, debeers's meddling made industrial diamonds cheaper, because it suppressed the demand from the jewelry market.

Re: De Beers admits defeat over man-made diamonds

#13

Post by userbinator »

kregasaurusrex wrote: post #2

This is great news for scientific research- diamonds for experimental purposes are a huge market that's impeded by their artificially high cost. From a material standpoint there's a multitude of uses for them- ranging from use in CERN's particle detectors for their high optical clarity, to creating nanodiamond transport mechanisms for drugs because of their resilience to microcellular activity. By creating a mass mar…

The Chinese have already done that --- at a fraction of the cost of DeBeers. Search AliBaba for "CVD diamond" and be amazed. Huge plates at <$100/carat.

Re: De Beers admits defeat over man-made diamonds

#14

Post by shagie »

ValleyOfTheMtns wrote: post #8
xur17 wrote: post #3

Are there any perceptible differences between these and 'natural' diamonds?

Well it says in the article that De Beers developed a machine to spot synthetic diamonds, so I presume so.

Its likely based on fluorescence. From https://books.google.com/books?id=WQp_rEWV2XUC&printsec=fron...

> In 1891, B. Walter was the first person to observe the well known cape spectrum in natural diamonds. This series of bands associated with type Ia natural diamonds (that are usually colorless and have blue fluorescence to ultraviolet light), are usually visible in the blue to violet part of the spectrum. ... No synthetic diamonds will show a cape spectrum.

It goes on to describe other types of visible tests.

The next capture (which I can't fully see on Google Books) describes a device called DiamondSure that fits on a desktop and looks at the cape fluorescence and absorption of particular wavelengths.

Re: De Beers admits defeat over man-made diamonds

#15

Post by godzillabrennus »

fgonzag wrote: post #10

"Lightbox will transform the lab-grown diamond sector by offering consumers a lab-grown product they have told us they want but aren't getting: affordable fashion jewelry that may not be forever, but is perfect for right now" This is clearly a play to devalue the image of man made diamonds. "May not be forever" my ass, it's the exact same thing. Their goal is probably to try to quickly drive the price of man made dia…

Smart move. Throw enough marketing dollars at misinformation and you can convince hordes of people to doubt facts.

Case in point. Despite overwhelming evidence there are people today who still debate climate change.

Re: De Beers admits defeat over man-made diamonds

#16

Post by BookmarkSaver »

godzillabrennus wrote: post #15
fgonzag wrote: post #10

"Lightbox will transform the lab-grown diamond sector by offering consumers a lab-grown product they have told us they want but aren't getting: affordable fashion jewelry that may not be forever, but is perfect for right now" This is clearly a play to devalue the image of man made diamonds. "May not be forever" my ass, it's the exact same thing. Their goal is probably to try to quickly drive the price of man made dia…

Smart move. Throw enough marketing dollars at misinformation and you can convince hordes of people to doubt facts. Case in point. Despite overwhelming evidence there are people today who still debate climate change.

Or the staggering number of anti-GMO laws and business ad campaigns.

Re: De Beers admits defeat over man-made diamonds

#17

Post by fratlas »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #7
mml wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

they are perfect, without inclusions, bubbles etc. really the only way to differentiate them. ironically.

You can introduce artificial defects during the manufacturing process to subvert detection of authenticity. Source: After reading this Wired article [1] ~15 years ago, myself and two friends tried to (unsuccessfully) put VC money together to commit to large amounts of manufactured diamonds for the consumer industry. [1] https://www.wired.com/2003/09/diamond/

What went wrong?

Re: De Beers admits defeat over man-made diamonds

#18

Post by 49bc »

> De Beers said the logo won't be visible to the naked eye, but it will make the stones easily identifiable as lab-grown.

They really still don’t get it still. Consumers aren’t making the same distinction for something that’s organically the same.

They’re really pushing a “lab-grown is different and mined is more valuable” branding maneuver that people just aren’t buying.

Re: De Beers admits defeat over man-made diamonds

#19

Post by cfadvan »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #11

Interestingly enough, this starts to bring up questions that have previously only been super active in science fiction circles, particularly, Star Trek: If you can perfectly recreate something down to the molecular level, what actually has value? (Assuming, someday, that synthetic versions are excessively cheap, in Star Trek's case.) If you can replicate cooked food perfectly, will people still claim that "real" food…

Not really, because “real” diamonds have very little intrinsic value. Now if we could cheaply manufacture Platinum, or your example of perfectly cooked food, your point would start to be relevant here. As it is, diamond is already a very artificial market.

Re: De Beers admits defeat over man-made diamonds

#20

Post by tehlike »

godzillabrennus wrote: post #15
fgonzag wrote: post #10

"Lightbox will transform the lab-grown diamond sector by offering consumers a lab-grown product they have told us they want but aren't getting: affordable fashion jewelry that may not be forever, but is perfect for right now" This is clearly a play to devalue the image of man made diamonds. "May not be forever" my ass, it's the exact same thing. Their goal is probably to try to quickly drive the price of man made dia…

Smart move. Throw enough marketing dollars at misinformation and you can convince hordes of people to doubt facts. Case in point. Despite overwhelming evidence there are people today who still debate climate change.

The diamond love itself was a result of marketing dollars from the same company.
Post reply on HN