A team of geophysicists at the Carnegie Institution for Science is perfecting a cheap way to create large diamonds. In his paper, “On the way to mass-scale production of perfect bulk diamonds,” published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Alexander Zaitsev stated that the method could cause a technological revolution.
“A profound impact of this innovation on industry (electronics, optics, thermal management, precise cutting), medicine (diamond scalpel surgery), and jewelry (cheap large brilliants) is difficult to overestimate,” he wrote.
The new method, begins with a tiny “seed” diamond, which acts as a landing point for other minute crystals floating around as gas. As more and more crystals land on the seed, a larger and larger diamond is created. The process occurs at temperatures above 1,700 degrees celsius, intense heat being one of the only conditions under which diamonds are malleable.

H. Tracy Hall, the creator of man-made industrial diamond, passed away at his home early on the morning of July 25. He was 88. Howard Tracy Hall was born on October 20, 1919, in Ogden, Utah, to Howard Hall and Florence Almina Tracy. As a young man he roamed the fields of Marriott, Utah, read avidly at the Ogden Carnegie Library, and assembled home-made contraptions from junk-yard components. As a fourth grader he told his teacher he would someday work for General Electric, the company so closely associated with his hero, inventor Thomas Edison.
