Five years ago, Wired reported on the state of the art in the diamond fabrication business. Now the Smithsonian is running an updated version of the story in the June 2008 edition of their magazine (and here on the web).What I love most about this story is that these diamond manufacturing businesses are finally taking the artificially-inflated value out of the industry. This quote from the article is most telling:
When Linares [CEO of artificial diamond company Apollo Diamond] was at a diamond conference a few years ago, he says, a man he declines to describe slipped behind him as he was walking out of a hotel meeting room and said someone from a natural diamond company just might put a bullet in his head.
Wow, there is some big business at play here, no doubt.
But right now diamonds are mostly a luxury item. Sure, the occasional bit of diamond dust is used for cutting tools and other industrial means, but the artificial value created by the luxury industry puts it out of the reach of many applications. Not only will artificial diamonds open up these applications for the first time, it will also help put an end to African violence.
Blood diamonds won't fund military efforts anymore once the bottom drops out on the diamond market, and that's a good thing. I only wish scientists would work on a way to artificially create rhino horn, elephant tusk, and yes even tiger penis. Flood the market with artificial clones indistinguishable from the original, and it eliminates the biggest reason to kill these endangered animals.
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