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.

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Diamonds are a girl’s best friend, but if you don’t have enough money to afford one, then here’s a piece of information - American scientists have developed a technique that leads to large scale production of cheap, perfect and extra-large ‘artificial’ diamonds in the lab.

The US team has found that microwave cooking can lead to synthetic diamonds, which are far cheaper and cleaner than their natural counterparts.

And to top it all, the improvement also means there is no theoretical limit on the size of diamonds that can be grown in the lab.

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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.

While a student at the University of Utah in 1941, Hall married his sweetheart, Ida-Rose Langford. After completing his B.S. and then an M.S. in chemistry in 1943, he served for two years as a Navy ensign. Returning to the University of Utah in 1946, he became Henry J. Eyring’s first graduate student, receiving his PhD in 1948. Two months later he started work at the General Electric Research Laboratory in Schenectady, N.Y.

At GE, Hall joined a team focused on synthesizing diamonds in the laboratory. On December 16, 1954, he became the first person to produce diamond from carbon using a verifiable and reproducible process.

Of the experience Tracy later recalled: “My eyes caught the flashing light from dozens of tiny crystals. My hands began to tremble; my heart beat rapidly; my knees weakened and no longer gave support—I knew that diamonds had finally been made by man.”

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