Lab-grown rocks and fewer weddings have put a huge damper on the market. On the bright side, a big dazzler is now affordable for many
  • RustyWizard@programming.devEnglish
    24·
    2 days ago

    Geoffrey Farrow at Raphael, a jeweller on the other side of the street, can only just bring himself to sell lab-grown diamonds. “They are synthetic,” he said. “Lab-grown sounds exotic, but it’s created – they make it by the buckets. There’s no history to it. The price is going to go down further and further.

    “It makes the stone that much cheaper, and people have the illusion that being big is something special. It’s not. It’s quality that you want.”

    What the actual fuck is he talking about? Is it the suffering that gives it quality? They’re impossible to tell apart without a magnifying glass.

    • shadysus@lemmy.caEnglish
      17·
      2 days ago

      more difficult than that iirc

      https://www.gia.edu/hpht-and-cvd-diamond-growth-processes

      Jewelers use magnification to read the laser inscription on the rocks and trust what it says. Most jewelers don’t have the equipment to detect the trace gasses and impurities that identify mined rocks.

      It’s possible to make lab grown gems with those impurities, but you end up with the shittier product that is mined diamonds

      • jarfil@beehaw.org
        2·
        23 hours ago

        From that article (thanks for sharing, btw) it seems like there are a series of relatively simple tools to identify the different kinds of diamonds, the main problem being large assortments of small pieces.

        It only mentions laser inscriptions in passing, how easy would it be to counterfeit one? Seems like there are many aspects that can be checked relatively easily to see whether the actual characteristics match those in the inscribed ID?

        In the polarizer strain test, I’m not sure which one makes a better diamond, one with more or less stress lines. Since the main aspect of ornamental diamonds is the ability to bend light as many times as possible, would the extra stress lines help or hinder that?

  • acargitz@lemmy.ca
    19·
    2 days ago

    You know what else used to be incredibly expensive, to the point of being more valuable than gold? Aluminum.

    So cry me a river.

    • gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de
      1·
      22 hours ago

      As a side note, falling electricity prices through solar could mean a lower (aluminum price/iron price) ratio. Just saying. This would mean that we would see more aluminum in place of iron.

      • jarfil@beehaw.org
        3·
        1 day ago

        Kind of reflects the difficulty of refining aluminum ore. It’s much cheaper to recycle aluminum, which is why it’s one of the most looked for materials to recycle, and as more gets recycled the final price drops.

  • 01011@monero.town
    18·
    2 days ago

    An unbelievable waste of time and human effort. One of the world’s most useless rackets and that’s saying something.