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  Animats
  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 applications. The technology is good enough to achieve flaw levels in the parts per billion range, and to make diamond windows for lasers 10cm across.[1] This is way above jewelry grade.Over on the natural diamond side, there's been a breakthrough. The industry used to break up some large diamonds during rock crushing. Now there's a industrial X-ray system which is used to examine rocks before crushing to find diamonds. It's working quite well. A 2500 carat diamond was found recently.[1][2] TOMRA, which makes high-volume sorters for everything from recyclables to rice, has a sorter for this job. This is working so well that there's now something of a glut of giant diamonds too big for jewelry.The finishing processes of cutting and polishing have been automated. The machinery for that comes mostly from China and India.Diamonds are now something you can buy by the kilo, in plastic bags.[1] https://e6-prd-cdn-01.azureedge.net/mediacontainer/medialibr...[2] https://www.forbes.com/sites/amandakooser/2024/08/23/monster...[3] https://ikcabstracts.com/index.php/ikc/article/download/4101...
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  A_D_E_P_T
  Over the past 10 years, there has been an explosion in cheap lab diamond and moissanite producers in China and India. 10 years ago, it was hard to find quality lab diamonds at a reasonable price, and moissanite was still reasonably expensive at $400-600/ct.Today, given cutthroat competition and "race to the bottom" pricing strategies, lab diamonds are ubiquitous, extremely high quality, and cheap. Less than $200/ct and sometimes much less: https://detail.1688.com/offer/751071300271.htmlMoissanites are now less than $5/carat at retail: https://detail.1688.com/offer/586468555080.htmlThese are legit. I've bought some.Within 10 years of today, I expect diamonds to lose almost all of their value. Moissanites have already become as near-worthless as synthetic rubies. This is going to open up new industrial uses for those gemstones.
• program_whiz
  For any aspiring inventors / engineers out there, take a good look at how Hall was treated by GE. He literally invented game-changing tech with every obstacle thrown in his way by management, and was given a 10% raise and $10 savings bond.Had he done it on his own, he would have been extremely wealthy, being the supplier of synthetic diamonds to the world (assuming he wouldn't have faced legal challenges by former employer). He would have also been able to pursue this full time, who knows how much he could have improved the tech.Just because the powers that be don't think its a good idea, doesn't mean it isn't (it also doesn't mean it is). And if they don't want you building it, for goodness sakes, don't just give them your amazing idea, build it so you can profit when it turns out to be a golden nugget.
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  dirtdobber
  Natural diamonds have value in terms of luxury. Synthetics do not, hence why they are cheap. If you want to buy a diamond because you think they're pretty, buy a synthetic one. If you want to buy a diamond as a luxury gift, buy a natural one.Rolex doesn't put synthetic diamonds on watches. Cartier doesn't put synthetic diamonds on bracelets. Tiffany's won't put synthetic diamonds on rings.If you think that natural diamonds are trending towards no longer being a luxury item, then don't buy them at all (why purchase a synthetic one if you think the diamond market is just a marketing ruse anyways?)I've never met someone that bought a synthetic diamond that didn't immediately try to justify it. I think that says a lot.
• highfrequency
  Nice article, and these links to other articles on the DeBeers monopoly / advertising campaign are great as well: “You can’t look at Jane and say she’s not worth 2 months’ salary.”https://www.theatlantic.com/past/issues/82feb/8202diamond1.h...https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-27371208
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  AStrangeMorrow
  I have seen lab grown diamond being quite a bit cheaper than mined ones for a while now. As in ×2 to ×3 times cheaper even.And yes, funnily it seems that the purer a diamond is (clear, few impurities etc) the higher its price/carat, until it is so pure that it means it is a lab grown diamond and not a natural one and the price drops
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  saghm
  When my fiancee and I got engaged last year, we bought our rings from a place that (in addition to having a robust process that allowed us to avoid having to go anywhere in person) uses lab-grown gemstones. Not only is the quality quite high and the color impressive (she picked a pink sapphire), the prices were much lower than we expected. I'm not really sure why anyone would want a "real" diamond at this point; you can get a better one for cheaper without any ethical qualms, and in my opinion the fact that we can basically assemble the gemstones we want at the molecular level is incredibly cool from an science nerd perspective.
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  istrice
  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 at some point. I guess I'll get her a golf-ball-sized diamond for our 10th anniversary.
• Ekaros
  One thing to consider is sell back value of diamonds. Which is horrible. For something that really should not wear too much, it seems the price someone is willing to pay for them after some use should be the real price.
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  robertritz
  My wife runs a jewelry business (in Asia not the USA). Natural diamonds are still in high demand and it's usually younger people getting the lab diamonds. Mostly beacuse of price.Most people want the nicest thing they can afford in the moment, whatever that is.
• simonebrunozzi
  "Have you ever tried to sell a diamond?" (1982) [0][0]: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1982/02/have-yo...
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  gruntledfangler
  “ Lab diamonds are a testament to the principle that what nature can do, man is capable of doing better.”Profound hubris in an otherwise interesting article.
• failuser
  But does it have enough suffering embedded to be a worthy engagement gift?
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  Kaijo
  This is true with some qualifications. If you're interested in the kind of investment grade diamonds that a major auction house would deal with, then you're looking at heavy weights and/or fancy colors that synthetics can't reach yet. In the diamond trade the word "paragon" is sometimes reserved for flawless or near-flawless stones above 100 carats, of which there is a long list of famous examples, but the largest gem grade synthetic is still around 30 carats I believe. Vivid colors top out at much lighter than that. I guess we'll be able to outdo nature within a few decades though (as far as terrestrial diamonds go, anyway -- I seem to recall reading somewhere about the discovery of moon-sized space diamonds).
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  gwbas1c
  > A perfectly cut, flawless lab diamond costs a fraction of the price of a mined diamond of lesser quality.When I shopped for an engagement ring in 2012, there was a clear cohort of women who significantly valued a diamond from the ground. Fortunately, my (now) wife and I saw through the marketing gimmick, and laughed all the way to the bank.
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  indoordin0saur
  I'm planning on buying an engagement ring very soon and my own plan (as someone who has never done this before!) is to get a good lab grown diamond but spend more money on the metal in the ring. You can make a gem stone in a lab but until we become a Kardashev II civilization we won't be making any sufficient quantity of gold in a lab. If I buy a good loose lab grown diamond will I be able to find someone who will fit it into a high quality gold ring?
• toomuchtodo
  Wired ran a great piece on the topic in 2003 ("The New Diamond Age" | Issue 11.09 September 2003).https://www.wired.com/2003/09/diamond/https://web.archive.org/web/20151031203903/https://www.wired...https://archive.today/Dwa8o
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  dirtdobber
  I don't see demand for natural diamonds going anywhere. There's a reason that Rolex, Cartier, and other luxury brands don't use cheap, synthetic diamonds in their products.I know a jeweler personally that sells synthetic and natural diamonds. He can spot the difference from a mile away between a synthetic and a natural diamond (synthetics look extremely pure and have no flaws). His wealthy clients buy natural diamonds. Not because it's a "better investment" but because they can.If you can buy a knockoff Louis Vuitton for 5% of the cost of the real one, great, go for it! Most people won't be able to tell the difference (I certainly can't). But the market for authentic Louis Vuitton isn't going anywhere, and the people that can afford it will buy the real ones, and the people that can't will buy the fake ones.As long as there's a distinction between natural and synthetic, synthetic diamonds will drop to a dollar a carat while naturals only become more of a status symbol.EDIT: changed real to natural when referring to diamonds
• danielodievich
  Synthetic diamonds from "cremains" (ash from cremation) have been a thing for a while. That ash is mostly carbon with other elements. "Wear your grandma" is thankfully not a slogan. My teenager children's recent answers to "would you want this" were "ewww gross absolutely not".
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  physicsguy
  They're cheaper but they're not cheap and that's part of the issue...I remember looking at engagement rings about 5 years ago, my now wife is quite environmentally conscious. At the time it was like ~£1200 for a diamond one and £800 for a synthetic one.
• flanked-evergl
  Odd that an article about aesthetics does not include one photo/picture of an actual, supposedly more beautiful, synthetic diamond.
• mholt
  Howard Tracy Hall's descendant is my sister-in-law. They have lots of his stories in their family history, and she wrote a book for children about the process of inventing his process for the artificial diamond [0]. An uplifting and inspiring story that simplifies things for a child to understand.[0]: https://www.amazon.com/Diamond-Boy-Creation-Diamonds-Tracy/d...
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  littleweep
  Tangentially related: Does anyone in the HN community have a recommendation for a reputable place for obtaining a lab-grown diamond for an engagement ring?
• mentalgear
  Not even to mention much more ethical than the blood diamonds that are artificially kept on "short supply".
• martyvis
  > Lab diamonds are a testament to the principle that what nature can do, man is capable of doing better.A lot of unfounded hubris there. Come back when you have perfected a man-made forest with all its diversity of plants and animals.
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  slm_HN
  "Synthetic diamonds are now purer, more beautiful, and vastly cheaper than mined diamonds. Beating nature took decades of hard graft and millions of pounds of pressure."What does graft mean in this context? Is there a process where you graft diamonds, like plants? Does it refer to the diamond seed crystals mentioned in the article?
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  aidenn0
  When TFA talks about semiconductors it really only directly compares it to silicon, when GaN is probably the nearest competitor to diamond, both in cost and performance. I believe diamond is "only" about 20x the cost of GaN; anyone know what the economics would be for substituting diamond for GaN in e.g. HVDC?
• Havoc
  I thought that had been the case for many years already?stigma is independent of any of those very reasonable metrics unfortunatelyYou need to pay someone to go dig stuff up apparently for love to be true love
• moab_desert1
  A friend recently mentioned an online jewelry retailer called Frank Darling [1], which sells both natural and lab-grown diamonds.They have a pretty interesting business model: they're mostly online, but also offer in-person appointments with a designer and offer to 3D print pieces in resin before producing them.[1] https://frankdarling.com/
• ckemere
  High end watches have had sapphire crystal faces for a while. Why not diamond??
• cortesoft
  How do you determine that the diamonds are 'more beautiful'?
• Zekio
  This must be why Ruby 3D printer nozzles are getting below 100 bucks
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  moralestapia
  (Not related to the content of the article)What a beautiful site.The subtle pink background, the choice of font, the minimal appearance (true to the spirit of being minimal, not just dead-ass simple), the way images are woven through, the footnotes, ...Excellent execution!
• hinkley
  When can I have a diamond GPU?
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  pton_xd
  I mean, this has been true for the better part of a decade. The difference now is that jewelers caved and many offer a selection of lab diamonds. There's still a high markup on lab diamonds in most retailers though. Loose lab diamonds are incredibly cheap, only $600 per carat!
• jiveturkey
  How long until synthetics are passed off as natural? Or maybe there's already a lot of that going on. Conflict diamonds are already "laundered" so why not synthetic.> Because it’s so difficult to distinguish between mined and lab diamonds (even for jewelers), diamond grading institutions inscribe LG or Laboratory-Grown on the rim of lab-grown diamonds, visible at 20-times magnification.
• kaon_
  We aren't far from Diamondillium!
• kylehotchkiss
  Approaching the end of De Beer's awful diamond scam is wonderful. Too many injustices perpetuated in Africa, too many lies to Americans about what matters in relationships. I'll never forget a college acquaintance a decade ago who spent $10,000 on a ring to woo his rich girlfriend. The engagement failed just a few weeks later. Good riddance. Long live synthetic diamonds.
• kelnos
  And yet natural diamonds are still as expensive as ever. There's still enough of a market for "the real thing", and even if demand were to drop somewhat, the cartel can still artificially keep prices high.
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  BeetleB
  Mostly irrelevant when it comes to the value, sadly. Especially for engagements.
• nojvek
  > Defense Department were more sympathetic to high-risk proposals, ‘especially if they included, “The Russians are doing it”’.It’s amazing how much science and technology has progressed due to adversarial competitive pressure.With Putin running Russia to the ground, that pressure is much lower.Would US have ever gone to space if there wasn’t a race, or got into nuclear if the Nazis weren’t doing it?