on the upside, it's not a natural diamond, so you and I are off the hook on buying any (outside of on tools, that is...)

I never did get why women hate any gem that wasn't pulled out of the ground. Synthetics look the same, sparkle the same, even endure wear and tear the same, but if it wasn't dug up by starving slave laborers in Zimbabwe, it just isn't romantic.

When questioned, the answer is something to the effect of "Do you want our love to be symbolized by something unnatural and not real?" My answer of, "No, I want our love to be symbolized by something not flawed like all natural diamonds are." was not taken well at all.

And from my experience, the one that they get all flustered over is the engagement ring - anything else can be synthetic, but that particular ring HAS to be natural.

I can ohhh and ahhh over gems and jewels but dont really wear a lot. The only diamonds I have are my engagement and wedding rings. And they arent big stones. I just feel weird wearing anything that costs that much. I have never asked Joshua for any jewelry with gems for a gift.

Personally manmade works for me. It makes very pretty stones affordable and without the environmental, etc. impact. The price makes me less afraid to wear them.

Thing is, if market forces were allowed to work NATURAL diamonds would be much cheaper. Natural coincidence placed something like 80% of all diamonds in a single easy-to-control spot in the world, and the DeBeers cartel has managed to leverage this into setting the price for the other 20%. DeBeers executives (as of 2000, when I heard the NPR report on it) can't even travel to this country because (as I recall) they were convicted in-absentia of racketeering in the 90s.

From a Nova special I saw way back in 1996, the only real difference now between artificial diamond and the real ones is artificial ones flouresce under black light. There's a small army of Russian scientists beavering away to get rid of this remaining problem and once they do the gem-quality diamond market will crack open like an egg.

Wow... I'd rather have the fluorescent diamond!

I wonder what causes that? Maybe pure diamond is flourescent, and we never knew it because we've never tested completely pure diamond before?

Dunno what causes it. fluorescence in general is caused by highly-excited photons hitting a substance and then being emitted a much lower rate of excitement (hit Wikipedia if you really want to read up on it). However, none of the things that I managed to read had anything about the actual reasons why synthetic diamonds are more fluorescent. However, couple of things worth noting are that natural diamonds can be fluorescent as well as synthetics. Secondarily, the GIA says that the average consumer has basically zero chance of being able to tell a fluorescent diamond from a non-fluorescent one. Even expert observers have issues with this.

http://www.gia.edu/gemsandgemology/18578/1850/526/back_issue_article_detail.cfm

Maybe something about the ultra-compact crystal structure of pure diamond causes a lower-frequency (visible light) resonance which impure diamonds lack. Kind of like the difference between striking a crystal chime and striking a cracked chime.

Maybe the natural diamonds that fluoresce just happen to be sufficiently pure, while most others are more impure. It may only take a tiny fault in the crystal lattice to completely prevent fluorescence, which does not occur in any other form of carbon.

Heck, it may even be related to the reason diamonds are transparent and all other forms of nearly pure carbon almost completely absorb all visible light wavelengths.

Then again, maybe I should stop speculating so much.