The linked article appears to be an April Fools joke <a href="https://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-Prank-the-Instructables-Community" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-Prank-the-Instructab...</a>
Having recently purchased an engagement ring, I am amazed by how inexpensive synthetic diamonds have become. Back in 2015 I paid for a natural stone. Prices then were nuts. You can get so much more weight, color, and clarity now. I really hope the extraction of natural diamonds becomes a historical shame soon.<p>I do not understand people who want a natural stone. My buddy is marrying a woman who insisted on a natural rock. It’s one of many things wrong with her, and fits the pattern I’ve seen with her to a T.
I'm all for synthetic, cheaply produced diamonds replacing all others in these scam markets. For example, the re-sale loss often encountered from selling on those old diamonds you find lying around the house is often a 25% to 50% haircut [1]. It's not some old rusty Nissan for goodness sake, it's precisely the same thing you bought previously, with none of its apparent purpose diminished in any way.<p>[1] - <a href="https://www.brightonsavoy.com.au/why-does-a-diamond-have-no-resale-value/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.brightonsavoy.com.au/why-does-a-diamond-have-no-...</a>
This April Fools joke got me back in 2013, and my family have never let me forget it! I should have checked the article date...
Thankfully our microwave started working again once it cooled off and all that was hurt was my pride.
There's a rather interesting film I watched called 'Nothing Lasts Forever (2022)', which talks about the two types of manufactured diamonds - high pressure high temperature and CVD diamonds - <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt16317380/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.imdb.com/title/tt16317380/</a>. It talks a bit about natural and manufactured diamonds being mixed together.<p>It sounds like it's pretty difficult to tell the difference between natural and HPHT manufactured diamond, without spectrometers etc.<p>I found this re. CVD diamonds though "You can identify CVD diamonds fairly simply. They have a unique strain pattern that doesn’t resemble that of natural diamonds and strong red fluorescence. In addition, they lack the typical "Cape Line" at 415 nm on their absorption spectrum. Instead, they present a strong line at 737 nm." - <a href="https://www.gemsociety.org/article/identification-of-synthetic-diamonds/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.gemsociety.org/article/identification-of-synthet...</a><p>I think <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdsMIG04vHA">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdsMIG04vHA</a> (a short clip from Bang Goes the Theory) shows CVD, using acetylene. And they verify with a raman spectrometer.
Element Six [1] makes all sorts of synthetic diamonds for industrial and analytical applications. Some are actually quite cheap, although there’s some irony perhaps in that they’re a DeBeers subsidiary.<p>We use these diamonds in my lab for experiments with nitrogen vacancy centers, which are an interesting platform for solid state qubits.<p>1. <a href="https://e6cvd.com/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://e6cvd.com/</a>