| Wednesday, June 2, 2004 |
11:39 - The genie's out—and he doesn't call De Beers "Master"
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.09/diamond.html
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This Wired article is a little old—from last September—but its significance may be rapidly increasing due to the realities of the tech industry. And in any case, it's a fascinating read.
"This is very rare stone," he says, almost to himself, in thickly accented English. "Yellow diamonds of this color are very hard to find. It is probably worth 10, maybe 15 thousand dollars."
"I have two more exactly like it in my pocket," I tell him.
He puts the diamond down and looks at me seriously for the first time. I place the other two stones on the table. They are all the same color and size. To find three nearly identical yellow diamonds is like flipping a coin 10,000 times and never seeing tails.
"These are cubic zirconium?" Weingarten says without much hope.
"No, they're real," I tell him. "But they were made by a machine in Florida for less than a hundred dollars."
Weingarten shifts uncomfortably in his chair and stares at the glittering gems on his dining room table. "Unless they can be detected," he says, "these stones will bankrupt the industry."
Even more interesting, though, especially in light of what seems to be the rapidly declining future of the silicon microchip industry (now that processes are getting so small that subatomic quantum forces are coming significantly into play), is what part these cultured diamonds might play in buoying Moore's Law.
And De Beers won't have a thing to say about it.
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Brian Tiemann
