Synthetic Diamonds

August 20, 2003 2:59 PM

Will new synthetic diamonds bring down the DeBeers cartel? "If you give a woman a choice between a 2-carat stone and a 1-carat stone and everything else is the same, including the price, what's she gonna choose? Does she care if it's synthetic or not? Is anybody at a party going to walk up to her and ask, 'Is that synthetic?' There's no way in hell. So I'll bite your ass if she chooses the smaller one." Two companies who are out to shake things up in the diamond business, if DeBeers doesn't find a way to stop them first.
posted by jeddings (12 comments total)

I repeat myself when under stress, I repeat myself when under stress, I repeat myself when under stress....
posted by Eekacat at 3:03 PM on August 20, 2003

you give a woman a choice between a 2-carat stone and a 1-carat stone and everything else is the same, including the price, what's she gonna choose? Does she care if it's synthetic or not? Is anybody at a party going to walk up to her and ask, 'Is that synthetic?'

Asking to second guess a woman...arrgGG! I'll walk the plank instead. But this is an interesting discussion with all the other diamonds that have been found lately. Canada is now # 2 in the world and recently they found a whole bunch of diamonds just sitting under ice in the Arctic.
posted by thomcatspike at 3:06 PM on August 20, 2003

search is your friend.
posted by machaus at 3:07 PM on August 20, 2003

Advice: do not tell a woman you give a stone to that it is artificial. She might have read Marx: Quantity drives out Quality. Then she might have read Darwin and got to thinking why a woman goes crazy about diamonds and such...
posted by Postroad at 3:10 PM on August 20, 2003

if this wasn't posted just last week i'll bite your ass.
posted by quonsar at 3:18 PM on August 20, 2003

Although making diamonds that look perty is quite a feat, my guess would be that the technological advantages of having an inexpensive diamond that could replace silicon as the semiconductor of choice would be mindblowing in its ramifications. From the Wired article: "A Pentium chip made of diamond could run at speeds that would liquefy silicon." Cool.
posted by ejunek at 3:24 PM on August 20, 2003

...just in case quonsar bites your ass...
posted by bshort at 3:34 PM on August 20, 2003

I repeat myself when under stress, I repeat myself when under stress, I repeat myself when under stress....

I listen to King Crimson when under stress. But it makes it worse...
posted by Shane at 3:42 PM on August 20, 2003

Won't this just make diamonds as ornament less desirable overall? My understanding is that they were artifically rare to begin with, now that they need not be considered rare at all their symbolic value is lessened.
posted by thirteen at 3:53 PM on August 20, 2003

From the Wired article: "A Pentium chip made of diamond could run at speeds that would liquefy silicon." Cool.

A diamond based processor would not function at the melting temperature of silicon -- that was hyperbole. Diamond offers increased thermal conductivity, but the effect on processor speed and temperature will be small.
posted by eddydamascene at 3:53 PM on August 20, 2003

I just don't see the point of diamonds in general. The only reason I have a diamond wedding set is that my grandmother left it to me when she died. And it's not a very big diamond either-- in fact the jeweler we took it to to be resized sniffed "Tiny little diamond". What's the point? Competition? "My husband bought me a bigger diamond than yours did!" Ugh. There are millions of things I'd rather spend money on than a diamond ring.
posted by Shoeburyness at 4:07 PM on August 20, 2003

D'oh! So much for searching for "synthetic diamonds." Damned stupid search engine...
posted by jeddings at 4:13 PM on August 20, 2003