SP’s: Move over Blood Diamonds, this technique creates authentic diamonds inside a Microwave in just 10 weeks.
Diamonds are girl’s best friends, but if you have happened to watch Blood Diamond or know the ethical issues surrounding the conflict diamonds, you would be a little depressed while gifting those to your fiance.
So, for all the good people out there, science has again come to the rescue. Now, the diamonds that took millions of years to form inside the Earth, while being subjected to huge pressure and temperature could be made inside the laboratories in just a few weeks.
Before we begin, it is important for you to know that this procedure will not create any cheap rip-offs of the original diamond such as cubic zirconia, commonly known as ‘imitation diamonds’ in the industry.
These new authentic diamonds are created by putting a small carbon lump inside a microwave filled with carbonized gases such as methane. The temperature is then increased until the carbon seed begins to glow like a superheated plasma ball. The high temperature allows the atoms inside the carbon seed to rearrange themselves into a crystalline formation and finally change into the world’s hardest element ‘diamond’.
This process takes roughly about 10 weeks, and even the best of the gemologist could not make out the mined diamonds from the diamonds created inside a microwave.
Now, the demand for these synthetic gems is just 1% of the total but, reports suggest that more and more people are preferring those over the blood diamonds. Also, the synthetic diamonds come at a lower price, since all you have to do is heat up the carbon and create the required conditions!!
As reported by Bloomberg, only about 45% of North American consumers from 18 to 35 prefer natural and untreated diamonds. So that looks like a thumbs up for the microwave diamonds.
So, what diamonds do you prefer, Microwave or Conflict? Tell us in comments below.