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De Beers admits defeat over man-made diamonds

money.cnn.com

111–120 of 455 posts

Re: De Beers admits defeat over man-made diamonds

#111
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Educated people who hate GMO are instant signal that they don’t understand science. A good filter

> Educated people who hate GMO are instant signal that they don’t understand science.

Not actually being familiar with the science in a particular domain and not understanding as science are very different things.

Re: De Beers admits defeat over man-made diamonds

#112
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Educated people who hate GMO are instant signal that they don’t understand science. A good filter

Lots of smart people have problems with Monsanto's business practices rather than GMO specifically.

Also, the fact is that Monsanto, which has had trouble with its ethical reputation, is very adamant about GMO.

So if you don't trust Monsanto for most things, you will especially not trust it to tell you the truth about the safety of its products nor about the completeness of their tests to ensure said safety.

Re: De Beers admits defeat over man-made diamonds

#113
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 syn…

That was 18 years ago, the synthetic diamonds today can be made to have the same impurities as natural ones and show up with the same spectrum.

Not really.

Synthetic diamonds can be readily detected by at least two instruments sold by De Beers.[1] They look at emissive and absorptive optical features that aren't due to impurities, but due to defects (vacancies, stacking faults, interstitials, etc.). These crystal defects are atomic-scale departures from lattice perfection that are inherent to high growth rates (compared to natural diamonds). You can't see them on visual inspection.

These machines are expensive, even when sold at De Beer's cost. You won't see them in the corner jewelry store. But for stones > a carat, it's worthwhile to send a gem to services that use these machines to determine whether the stone is, for example, a natural type IIa (the purest of natural diamonds) or a potential synthetic that "needs further characterization".

[1] https://www.iidgr.com

Re: De Beers admits defeat over man-made diamonds

#114
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What went wrong?

No one thought it was viable considering the resources of the Da Beers cartel. In hindsight, they were right. I still have a small block of manufactured diamond I had made with impurities (as a proof of concept) in a box in my closet. With age comes wisdom.

Could be the timing was wrong? I'd think that an online direct to consumer model could work now with focus on social media marketing. Worst case you get bought out by De Beers if you make headway, especially now they are getting in the consumer synthetic market themselves.

Re: De Beers admits defeat over man-made diamonds

#115
post #50
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

Industrial diamonds are cheap if all you want is an abrasive, but diamonds also have very high thermal conductivity, very high index of refraction (without the birefringence of silicon carbide), and could potentially be useful as semiconductors. We need big and cheap single crystal diamonds to make full use of them. A strong market for synthetic gemstone diamonds could make that happen.

And with the NV- (nitrogen vacancy) center, they're quantum computing devices. The NV- center is a qubit.

Re: De Beers admits defeat over man-made diamonds

#116
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't necessarily hate all GMO but I'm very dubious about GMO crops that are engineered to withstand Glyphosate better and I prefer not to eat such crops because they are more likely to have been treated with this herbicide.

Why? Are you a dicotyledon that relies on the shikimic acid pathway to synthesize folates?

The parent is probably a very complex system with too many pathways involved in their life to be confident that none of them will get involved in a side-reaction. I'm not a surface impurity on a roll of sheet metal but that doesn't mean I'll stick my hand into a steel pickling vat.

Re: De Beers admits defeat over man-made diamonds

#117
post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this theme was first explored in depth in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep . Having a "real" animal was a status symbol.

Same author, earlier exploration: The Man in the High Castle (1962) explored it in the context of otherwise-identical objects, one of which was involved in some historic event, the other of which wasn't

You're right! I need to read that one again...

Re: De Beers admits defeat over man-made diamonds

#118
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.

Read about that business in detail in this good book.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merchants_of_Doubt

Re: De Beers admits defeat over man-made diamonds

#119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you have that preference? It's my understanding that the alternatives are worse.

Organic food is worse than food wich was treated with various chemicals to kill living things? Thats news to me. But you probably mean "alternatives" for producing dirt cheap. Then yes, there are much worse substances around. Doesn't make it good, though.

Organic food is treated with pesticides and herbicides too. There's a limited list of allowed chemicals, some of which are much worse than glycophosphate.

Re: De Beers admits defeat over man-made diamonds

#120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

GMO are a very powerful technology. Like anything powerful, an intelligent person calls for caution. A lot of people are worrying about GMO in food because we don't have enough data about them. We are changing things that could have important biological, health and ecological impacts, but the companies producing them are not willing to test them extensively for safety during 20 years before selling them. We don't kno…

And yet none of the food we farm hasn’t been modified, genetically. None of it is natural. Are you as worried about new strains of rice? I can see a good argument to worry about all of it, but picking a particular method and demonising it confuses me. But perhaps it’s because I’ve not been exposed to the anti-GMO propaganda (and pro-) that the USA is flooded with that I’m not “intelligent”?
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