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Synthetic diamonds are now purer, more beautiful, and cheaper than mined

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Re: Synthetic diamonds are now purer, more beautiful, and cheaper than mined

#301

Post by db48x »

jiggawatts wrote: post #207
fennecbutt wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where's my magic book then. And my atomic fabbers! Lemme 3d print a phone.

Magic book = iPad or Remarkable Atomic fabber = chip fabs making things on ~10 atom scales 3D printing homes is possible now, just a bit niche

And yet we’re not really there yet. The book wasn't just a tablet computer; it was programmed to continually analyze everything happening around it and relate those events back to the education of the owner. It shocked a bully who was playing keep–away with it. It noticed that the owner was eating junk food, and taught her a better diet. It taught her to read, as well as manners and exercises and elocution. Later a constable unobtrusively scanned it and then very carefully explained (so that it wouldn’t shock him) that nobody would try to take it away from her during her visit, so long as she didn’t show it to anybody or try to interface it with a printer. It told her stories that aided her in running away from an abusive father, in avoiding police patrols so she could sleep in a public park undisturbed, etc, etc. It invented new stories with fractal depth, allowing her to ask questions and get more and more detailed information. Its pages were both a sophisticated microscope and telescope. She used it to design and print a nanotech sword and later to infiltrate a hive–mind society.

And it also contained the text of every other book ever written, of course.

And arguably it was that character’s mother too.

I’m going to have to reread this one soon; it’s such a good story.

Re: Synthetic diamonds are now purer, more beautiful, and cheaper than mined

#302

Post by db48x »

hammock wrote: post #297
db48x wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, not quite. They were making diamond windows from atmospheric carbon dioxide at room temperature in household machines or machines you could rent at the post office. We’re a ways off from that yet.

I guess there is some sci-fi book everyone has read but me?

Yes!

It’s called “The Diamond Age, or a Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer” by Neal Stephenson. I definitely recommend it.

Re: Synthetic diamonds are now purer, more beautiful, and cheaper than mined

#303

Post by ninetyninenine »

poisonborz wrote: post #158
istrice wrote: post #138

I started looking into diamonds two years before I proposed to my now wife and went really down the rabbit hole of the chemistry, history, and marketing behind diamonds. Lab-made was a no brainer, I got a flawless and huge stone for the price I would have paid for a crappy 1ct from DeBeers. My only regret is that whatever I paid for the diamond will still be way over-market in a few years but well, had to get married…

Why and how became diamonds a necessity of marriage in the US? Did your fiancé really expect a diamond, and would have she be disappointed by something that has only worth to you?

A lot of women want some sort of tribute as proof of your love. It's common in the animal kingdom and diamonds are debeers method of capitalizing on it for humans.

If debeer didn't exist, something else would exist in its place, because the root of this is not debeer. The root is female nature.

It's better this way to artificially jack up the price of diamonds. Because then you can find people who are selling the diamond at an undercut price and satisfy the female instinct. Is the diamond mined? How would she know?

Otherwise if debeers didn't do this, women may influence the culture to latch onto some other form of tribute that can't be made artificially. Gold let's say.

Re: Synthetic diamonds are now purer, more beautiful, and cheaper than mined

#304

Post by slt2021 »

mobilefriendly wrote: post #236
slt2021 wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

bitcoin is the 21 century's diamond. Same useless string of cryptographically signed bytes, but for some reason the humanity agrees to assign some value just because of scarcity mindset.

At least diamonds are shiny and you don’t have to pay miners literally forever

Bitcoin has its value due to anonymity and global footprint.

I can ransom hospitals with cyber attacks and get paid millions sitting on North Korea/rusia/Iran and dont have to stand up from my desk.

I can run distributed anonymized illicit drug distribution risk free and get paid a lot.

I can hire hitmen to gather intel and harm my adversaries and arrange kinetic campaigns.

A lot of good use cases.

Re: Synthetic diamonds are now purer, more beautiful, and cheaper than mined

#305

Post by newZWhoDis »

Animats wrote: post #105

That's a good article. The whole history is there. The commercial side has made huge progress, too. Look up "diamond making machine" on Alibaba. You can buy a high-pressure, high temperature six sided press for about US$200,000. A chemical vapor deposition machine is about the same price. De Beers, the diamond cartel, has an R&D operation, Element Six. They sell synthetic diamonds for lasers and other exotic applicat…

I just want solid diamond cookware.

Wouldn’t a diamond skillet be incredibly non-stick, easy to clean, and totally non toxic?

Re: Synthetic diamonds are now purer, more beautiful, and cheaper than mined

#306

Post by HWR_14 »

perth wrote: post #293
opan wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't we already have good scratch protection? Cracks from drops seem like the main issue.

So scratching definitely still happens, both on sapphire camera lenses and new scratch-resistant screen technology. I’ve mainly had it happen with concrete. I think concrete sometimes just has some rocks in it that have a very high hardness because I’ve gotten pretty thick scratches in new iPhones when they’ve taken a slide over a rough concrete sidewalk due to a drop while walking.

Aren't both the lens and the screen are resilient to steel/metal scratches? I'm not willing to run keys or a knife over a phone on purpose.

Re: Synthetic diamonds are now purer, more beautiful, and cheaper than mined

#307

Post by mmoskal »

hammock wrote: post #297
db48x wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, not quite. They were making diamond windows from atmospheric carbon dioxide at room temperature in household machines or machines you could rent at the post office. We’re a ways off from that yet.

I guess there is some sci-fi book everyone has read but me?

Literally The Diamond Age.

Re: Synthetic diamonds are now purer, more beautiful, and cheaper than mined

#308

Post by kuschku »

perth wrote: post #293
opan wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't we already have good scratch protection? Cracks from drops seem like the main issue.

So scratching definitely still happens, both on sapphire camera lenses and new scratch-resistant screen technology. I’ve mainly had it happen with concrete. I think concrete sometimes just has some rocks in it that have a very high hardness because I’ve gotten pretty thick scratches in new iPhones when they’ve taken a slide over a rough concrete sidewalk due to a drop while walking.

I've similarly experienced bad scratches whenever my phone and my keys come into contact, hardened steel may still be able to cause scratches?

Re: Synthetic diamonds are now purer, more beautiful, and cheaper than mined

#309

Post by david38 »

amelius wrote: post #211
_ph_ wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am pretty sure, diamonds would make awful eyeglasses. While their index of refraction is high, which makes glasses thin, their chromatic dispersion is high. That is the very thing which makes their glitter so colorful. For good optical systems you want to try to reduce the dispersion, to 0, if possible. Another story is the scratch-resistance. For that it would be sufficient to coat the surface of the lens with a t…

Maybe we can have diamond-based scratch protection on smartphones?

We already have sapphire

Re: Synthetic diamonds are now purer, more beautiful, and cheaper than mined

#310

Post by jaggederest »

nsteel wrote: post #215
mitthrowaway2 wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is certainly good news for lasers. Many people don't realize how good diamonds are for this. Transparent with a 65% higher refractive index than glass, and 8x the thermal conductivity of copper. And completely scratch-proof!

Why are they not more popular as a material for heatsinks? Especially with those that like decorating the inside of the PC with fairy lights.

Riffing on this, the amazing thing about diamond is not merely that it's a better conductor of heat, but that it's about 2.5 times higher than copper.

The only thing that beats it is single crystal boron arsenide which has some obvious downsides, being of course much more expensive and involving arsenic, which is considered a bad thing.

And with that, diamond is destined to be even cheaper than silicon, I think. Much more available and easier to purify, the hard part is rendering it into a crystal which is relatively solved.

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