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Comment by teddyh | Hacker News Reader

The term you use, “a synthetic stone”, is odd considering it actually is a diamond.

I mean, if the gold in the ring was not mined from the earth, but instead extracted from seawater (it’s a thing), would you call that not “gold”, but “a synthetic metal”?

What about if the gold was from recycled computers?

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"Synthetic stone" is another bit of marketing the diamond cartels have come up with to combat the fact that they're losing market share from artificial scarcity - imply that the man-made diamonds are somehow inferior to natural stones.

A few years ago I read the diamond lobbyists were trying to require "synthetic" diamonds to have some sort of microscopic etching inside. Apparently the technology is getting so good even skilled diamond appraisers aren't able to tell the difference.

They can tell the difference because the manufactured ones, especially those produced by the vapour deposit process, are too flawless to be natural :)

I've also read that the flawless manufacturers are now introducing imperfections to combat just this!

Synthetic in terms of the definition "produced artificially", that is, in a lab. Non-synthetic would be one produced naturally (most likely many miles under the earth's surface). It's the method of production, not the chemical properties, the distinguish synthetic from non-synthetic.

Most of the lab processes are at least structurally similar to that "natural" process: at the end of the day it is just ways of pressuring Carbon into a grid. Maybe a better analogy is that we don't (currently, at least) make a distinction between "natural" foods and "greenhouse/hydroponically grown".

We have plenty of people complaining that foods should be labeled GMO or non-GMO, which is the exact same debate. Except dumber, actually.

Not exactly. GMO foods are genetically different by definition. Whether or not the difference is significant is another question, but natural vs "synthetic" diamond really is closer to the question of where a plant is grown, or perhaps if it's wild vs. planted.

So it's more like the Champagne versus Sparkling Wine situation.

Right, it's only a Diamond if it's from the bloody regions of European colonialism, otherwise it is just Sparkling Carbon.

> It's the method of production, not the chemical properties, the distinguish synthetic from non-synthetic.

So i give you two stones. Can you tell me which one is synthetic? It's a marketing term only. We don't call the gold used in the ring as man-made, but it is certainly blended by man with other elements.

No, but what does that matter? It mainly comes down to cost. If you give me 2 diamonds that are absolutely equivalent in terms of size, clarity, etc. and tell me that one costs $6000 and the other $600 then I can tell you which one is natural and which one is synthetic. I want the $600 synthetic one.

If there is a gold cartel to enforce it, yes.

For a humorous example see the origin of "processed cheese".

Cheese is a bad comparison, since cheese is different from what “processed cheese” contains. But gold is gold, and diamond is diamond – i.e. elemental particles in a regular structure.

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