Re: OT: Marcury has a layer of diamond 10 miles thick, NASA spacecraft finds

On 3/08/2024 12:28 am, Ralph Mowery wrote:

In article <v8iihu$2q9s6$1@dont-email.me>, bill.sloman@ieee.org says...

>
To jewellers. We mine 27 metric tons of diamonds, and make 900 metric
tons of synthetic diamonds,essentially all for industrial applications.
>
We wouldn't be doing that if industrial diamonds were "almost
worthless". The fact the gem-quality diamonds can be sold for a lot more
money than industrial diamonds doesn't make industrial diamonds
worthless - if gem-quality diamonds fell out of fashion we'd still be
digging up and making a lot of industrial diamonds.

  From what I could find in a quick search the industrial diamonds are
only about 10 to 20 dollars per carat versus the several thousand dollars
the jewel  quality ones would cost.  That is where I base my
'worthless' price at.

Cheap isn't the same as worthless.

Industry still uses a lot of them in many processes so they are valuable
for use but worthless for money cost.

80% of mined diamonds - 135 million carats - are fit only for use as industrial diamonds, but that's still a couple of billion dollars at 10 to 20 dollars a carat. The 20% of mined diamonds that can be sold as gemstones are worth about hundred times more per carat, but only twenty times more in aggregate. We synthesise 33 times more iduatrial diamonds than than we dig up, so the market for industrial diamonds is clearly bigger than the market for gemstones.
Nothing would stop working if the gemstone supply was cut off, but industrial diamonds keep industry working.
The gemstone business is a luxury trade that piggy-backs off the industrial diamond supply chain.
Diamond mining supports several rather unpleasant regimes
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_diamond
and rich women really ought prefer synthesised diamonds.
--
Bill Sloman, Sydney
--
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