[HN Gopher] A 155 carat diamond with 92 mm diameter (2017)
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       A 155 carat diamond with 92 mm diameter (2017)
        
       Author : Tomte
       Score  : 53 points
       Date   : 2022-10-27 11:53 UTC (11 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.innovations-report.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.innovations-report.com)
        
       | mhb wrote:
       | Paper:
       | 
       | https://www.researchgate.net/publication/315136046_Ion_bomba...
        
       | monkpit wrote:
       | https://archive.ph/XT3c5
        
       | userbinator wrote:
       | There is no mention of its thickness, but from calculation using
       | its mass, and approximating its shape as a cylinder, it's
       | approximately 1mm.
       | 
       | Here's a better picture of it:
       | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Single-crystal_CVD_diamon...
        
         | leplen wrote:
         | The description in your link has the thickness: Freestanding
         | unpolished diamond single crystal synthesized by heteroepitaxy
         | on Ir/YSZ/Si(001). The thickness of the disc is 1.6 +- 0.25 mm
         | and its weight is 155 carat.
        
       | xhkkffbf wrote:
       | What are some of the best and least expensive lab made diamonds
       | out there? Not CZ or moissanite but just pure carbon. Any
       | opinions?
        
       | makapuf wrote:
       | Let's hope this fad of "natural" transparent carbon crystals die
       | quickly, as aluminum as a rare metal did. Its extraction,
       | transformation and distribution channels deserve to quickly die.
        
         | Isamu wrote:
         | The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson is a fun book, where diamond
         | becomes an extremely cheap building material due to
         | nanotechnology.
        
           | nfriedly wrote:
           | Hey, quick question, I just noticed the subtitle of Diamond
           | Age is "A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer" - are there
           | actually illustrations in the book that I'd be missing if I
           | bought the Audiobook rather than a printed copy?
        
             | thfuran wrote:
             | I doubt it, though I only have the audiobook. The subtitle
             | refers to an in-story book.
        
             | dmitrygr wrote:
             | "A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer" is a device (smart book
             | for educating) that was created by a character in a book.
             | The book itself it not illustrated
        
               | nfriedly wrote:
               | Thank you!
        
               | jon_richards wrote:
               | One of my favorite moments from that is when the book
               | tricks the child into starting to learn to read.
               | 
               | I think we're not far off from needing AI "best friends"
               | to raise us and assist us through an increasingly
               | complicated world.
        
             | woodwireandfood wrote:
             | I don't remember any in the printed version, but it's been
             | long enough that I'm not certain.
        
           | marcosdumay wrote:
           | The Diamond Age spends a really small amount of time talking
           | about actual diamonds. So, while fun, I disagree it's on
           | topic here.
           | 
           | (But if you want a book about nanotechnology, yes, it's it.)
        
         | bluedevil2k wrote:
         | > extraction, transformation and distribution channels deserve
         | to quickly die.
         | 
         | Why? Have any reasons for your belief? There's a reason
         | diamonds are expensive and it's not "artificial scarcity" as
         | the uneducated people here like to claim. It's because people
         | want the diamonds and are willing to pay the expensive prices!
        
         | makestuff wrote:
         | Aren't diamonds not even that "rare" relative to other
         | gemstones? The only difference is the artificial scarcity with
         | diamonds.
        
           | pfdietz wrote:
           | Diamonds are actually quite abundant -- hundreds of
           | kilometers below the surface of the Earth.
        
           | saxonww wrote:
           | not sure about the relative rarity, but De Beers did/does
           | artificially limit available stock to keep prices up. If you
           | read really anything about them, you'll see that market
           | manipulation was core to their business model from the start.
        
             | dylan604 wrote:
             | The fact that there's now an ad campaign for Only Natural
             | Diamonds just shows how desperate they are.
        
               | nailer wrote:
               | I loved how they used 'natural' versus 'mined' to avoid
               | focus on environmental issues.
        
               | dylan604 wrote:
               | "There's a 10 point bump in exploring vs drilling" --Toby
               | Ziegler, White House Communications Director, The West
               | Wing
        
               | onion2k wrote:
               | The diamond industry generates about $110bn a year
               | (although most of that isn't shiny gemstones). You can
               | see why companies might be desperately clinging on to
               | that...
        
               | samatman wrote:
               | By weight, of course, the diamond industry is entirely
               | industrial, gems are a rounding error.
               | 
               | By value? Other way around. This source says $1.8B in
               | 2018. https://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-
               | analysis/industri...
        
               | Turing_Machine wrote:
               | Right. Most diamonds are ugly brown or black things that
               | get crushed up for use as industrial abrasives.
        
               | dylan604 wrote:
               | Ask the people using diamonds for this purpose if
               | "diamonds are forever". I'm guessing a resounding "hell
               | no" response.
               | 
               | Denying the manipulation power of marketing is just sheer
               | folly.
        
             | bluedevil2k wrote:
             | This hasn't been true for 20 years. "The DeBeers monopoly"
             | has become the go to argument for Reddit and sadly this far
             | more educated forum. DeBeers isn't even the biggest diamond
             | producer any more, Alrosa is (Russian government company).
             | Alrosa and DeBeers together are around 80% of production,
             | so DeBeers no longer has pricing power.
             | 
             | The reason for this - the discovery of diamond mines
             | outside the DeBeers stronghold of Southern Africa - Russia,
             | Canada, Australia.
             | 
             | DeBeers used to sell their diamonds on a take it or leave
             | it style. Cutters could take their sale price or not, but a
             | "no" essentially put yourself out of business.
             | 
             | Now rough diamonds are mostly sold via auctions. There's
             | about an auction every 1-2 weeks across all the miners, so
             | there's always an opportunity for cutters to buy supply,
             | and prices are out in the public.
        
               | rocket_surgeron wrote:
               | "DeBeers controls the diamond market" is a myth that
               | won't die.
               | 
               | As an aside, I've noticed that circle of people who love
               | chiming in about diamonds tends to paradoxically overlap
               | with the circle of people who think crypto is awesome
               | despite the "vibe" of the two being extremely similar.
               | 
               | I've found it best to just let them rage against their
               | chosen machine.
        
         | arghwhat wrote:
         | The mind boggles at the amount of resources spent on trying to
         | distinguish stuff dug out from the ground from stuff made in a
         | lab, and "educating" people in this process.
         | 
         | It is such a shame when a person's shiny rock is ever so
         | slightly shinier than those that cost lives to dig out of dirt.
        
           | ansible wrote:
           | If you take a long hard look at the overall economy, well, we
           | waste a lot of time and energy on frivolous things. All in
           | the name of supposedly making ourselves feel better. Which of
           | those are actually important, and which of those are not? Who
           | is to judge?
           | 
           | Some people will only be happy riding actual jet skis, where
           | others will be happy riding one in a video game, which uses
           | comparatively fewer resources. Should we outlaw or more
           | severely regulate actual jet skis? Ditto for other activities
           | (horse riding vs Red Dead Redemption 2 or Breath of the
           | Wild).
           | 
           | Just for the record, I'd like to see everyone getting out
           | there in the real world riding bicycles... but I'm not
           | prepared to legislate that as the preferred outdoor activity.
           | 
           | And the same argument can be made for lots of things, from
           | suborbital launches to gigantic art projects, to suburban
           | cities vs. high-density walkable cities.
           | 
           | We could actually raise up everyone's living standards and
           | have them all work less hours per week with some attitude
           | adjustment, commonsense regulations and reorienting of our
           | national priorities. I don't know when that's going to happen
           | though.
        
           | HPsquared wrote:
           | It's just self-interest, really. The PR submarine in action.
        
       | photochemsyn wrote:
       | For those concerned about distinguishing 'natural' from
       | 'synthetic' diamonds (not really that meaningful IMO other than
       | maintaining artificial scarcity of a luxury/status item), there's
       | a simple fix: use atmospheric carbon as the building material.
       | Atmospheric CO2 has trace amounts of carbon-14 (~1 per 10^12 C
       | atoms) and the resulting beta-decay-mode emissions can be easily
       | easily detected.
       | 
       | Practically, this means the methane fed into the chemical vapor
       | deposition process has to be extracted from biogas (say, a
       | chicken manure digester) or directly synthesized from air and
       | hydrogen (Sabatier process). This feedstock will contain the same
       | trace amount of carbon-14 as the atmosphere and will be
       | incorporated into the resulting diamond.
       | 
       | This seems like such an obvious thing to do for various reasons.
       | It allows the (increasingly irrelevant) natural diamond industry
       | to easily distinguish between their product and synthetic
       | products. Not only that, there's probably a huge market for such
       | 'atmospheric diamonds' among the people interested in green
       | products, or tech products. Finally, while the cost of
       | synthesizing methane feedstock is still quite a bit higher than
       | just using natural gas, that's negligible relative to the cost of
       | the final product and shouldn't be a factor.
       | 
       | Time to go write up a business plan, isn't it?
       | 
       | P.S. full paper here:
       | 
       | https://sci-hub.se/10.1038/srep44462
        
         | viggity wrote:
         | There is a CVD diamond detector available called Yehuda. It
         | makes some sort of distinction based on the phosphorescence.
         | 
         | https://www.riogrande.com/knowledge-hub/videos/how-does-the-...
        
         | ISL wrote:
         | If you're trying to forge a diamond to bypass this particular
         | technique, one can use methane extracted from the earth.
        
         | nailer wrote:
         | Already done, there were atmosphere-carbon diamonds on sale at
         | Selfridges corner shop a couple of months back.
        
           | photochemsyn wrote:
           | Right you are, they seem to have the whole process running.
           | Just in one location, though.
           | 
           | https://skydiamond.com/our-process
        
             | murphyslab wrote:
             | > Each carat of mined diamond has a footprint of over 100kg
             | of carbon dioxide and over 500kg of greenhouse gases in
             | total.
             | 
             | The report by Imperial College London Consultants, cited by
             | Sky Diamond, highlights the environmental and climate costs
             | of mining so-called precious stones:
             | 
             | http://www.imperial-consultants.co.uk/wp-
             | content/uploads/202...
             | 
             | One more reason to ensure that synthetic diamonds cannot be
             | identified or differentiated as such, given the high
             | environmental impact of extracting that carbon allotrope
             | from the ground.
        
         | TeMPOraL wrote:
         | > _This seems like such an obvious thing to do for various
         | reasons. It allows the (increasingly irrelevant) natural
         | diamond industry to easily distinguish between their product
         | and synthetic products._
         | 
         | Surely we would want the opposite? I..e for someone to unload a
         | ton of lab-grown diamonds indistinguishable from "natural"
         | ones, to once and for all kill the racket run by De Beers and
         | friend.
        
           | Red_Leaves_Flyy wrote:
           | They'd have to drive the cost down to barely above minimally
           | viable real costs and scale larger than debeers to
           | accommodate the induced demand of dirt cheap diamonds
           | proliferating through the market. Swarovski/cz/generic
           | translucent stone market's would also be crushed by this.
        
         | dylan604 wrote:
         | >This seems like such an obvious thing to do for various
         | reasons
         | 
         | Do this enough as a carbon sequestration method, and save the
         | environment!
        
           | thfuran wrote:
           | Yeah, you just need a lot of renewable energy and somewhere
           | to put a new, extra posh mountain range.
        
             | jon_richards wrote:
             | And then we can finally finish the first second of
             | eternity. https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~spok/grimmtmp/117.txt
        
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       (page generated 2022-10-27 23:02 UTC)