"The Diamond Deception"



PBS Airdate: February 1, 2000
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H. TRACY HALL, SR.: We can take some of this material and put it in this tube which is constructed out of graphite. And we will be heating this in a high-pressure, high-temperature press. And in the process, the peanut butter will be carbonized.

NARRATOR: Cooking peanut butter at temperatures of 3000 degrees under pressure of over a million pounds per square inch is a recipe that won't fill your stomach - but it might make you rich.

H. TRACY HALL, SR.: So, peanut butter to diamond.

NARRATOR: For nearly 50 years, scientists have known how to transform carbon rich substances into small industrial diamonds, but the trick to making gem quality stones has remained elusive - until now. Today, it may be possible to manufacture diamond jewels that are indistinguishable from the real thing - and it has the diamond industry worried.

MARTIN RAPAPORT: Just what if there is a way to synthesize diamonds that are non-detectable from natural diamonds? What if technology gives us the ability to make a synthetic diamond that no one knows is a synthetic?

NARRATOR: What will happen to the mystique of this billion-year-old stone if science finally solves the mystery of making the perfect gem diamond? For this most brilliant and treasured jewel, Mother Nature, it seems, no longer holds the patent.

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NARRATOR: Deep under the earth - in mines scattered around the world - thousands of tons of rock are displaced each day in hopes of uncovering a few gem-quality diamonds.

STEPHEN LUSSIER: There's something magical about diamonds, they've captured the imagination of people for so long, I think it's things like, you know, the fact that they are three billion years old, the fact that it takes enormous effort to find diamonds in the world. It takes even more enormous effort to get them out. They have this magnificent way of dealing with light that separates them from all the other precious stones. They really are just a miracle of nature.

NARRATOR: But how would we feel if this miracle of nature could be copied, atom by atom, in a laboratory in just a few hours? Could any reproduction, no matter how faithful, ever compare with a natural stone?

ALEX GRIZENKO: A diamond is a diamond. If it's carbon and if it looks like a diamond, it's a diamond. It's not a simulant. And as we know, there are many simulants on the market. Cubic zirconia has been around for many years. A new simulant called moissanite has entered the marketplace. But these are all pretending to be carbon. They're not carbon. Hence, they're not diamonds.

NARRATOR: Diamonds have always invited fakery, which was often easy to spot. And while the techniques for producing look-a-likes have improved, these sparklers are still no closer to being diamonds than a piece of glass. Real diamonds are much more difficult to make - and nearly impossible to break. Their chemical composition was only discovered in the late 1700s, after pioneering chemist Antoine Lavoisier found a way to burn one. In this lab a real diamond is being heated to over 1500 degrees centigrade. After being dropped into liquid oxygen, the diamond burns completely. All that is left is carbon dioxide gas - proving that diamonds are nothing but pure carbon. The only pure carbon substance known in Lavoisier's time was graphite - the soft, black material in pencil lead.

Although this theory is just to make a synthetic diamond (fake), if I had the tools to make the peanut butter in my fridge to a diamond ILL BE STINKING RICH...haha