Besides the typical necklaces and bracelets you'll see at any jeweler, there's also a longstanding societal expectation that before getting married, a couple should invest in a flashy (and extremely expensive) diamond engagement ring.
The jewelry industry is worth big bucks, with nearly a third of a trillion dollars in sales in the United States alone in 2016.
While jewelry can incorporate many different precious metals and gemstones, the jewel in the industry's crown (so to speak) has always been diamonds.
Now, some next-level tech could disrupt the whole system.
Besides the typical necklaces and bracelets you'll see at any jeweler, there's also a longstanding societal expectation that before getting married, a couple should invest in a flashy (and extremely expensive) diamond engagement ring.
Diamonds, which are frequently mined in impoverished countries in sub-Saharan Africa, draw big companies to these areas. But mining practices can be shady and unregulated. They can also bring conflict without doing much to increase wealth among the locals.
The Clean Diamond Trade Act, as well as voluntary standards put in place by big companies like De Beers, make the practice of diamond mining somewhat more ethical, but it's still an extremely problematic industry.
It sounds impossible since real diamonds require tons of pressure (and many, many years) to form. Yes, there are lab-grown fake diamonds like cubic zirconia, but what if we could create actual diamonds?
Turns out we're not far away...
Believe it. These aren't the same microwaves you use to reheat last night's lasagna, but the same basic technology is being used to create picture-perfect diamonds.
Let's call it CVD for short. This technique requires a tiny piece of diamond, called a carbon seed. When it's placed in a special microwave with carbon-heavy gas, magic happens.
Eventually, the carbon-heavy gas and carbon seed form a plasma ball (which presumably looks pretty cool). Inside the ball, the carbon atoms crystallize as the gas breaks down.
The small carbon seed attracts like-minded atoms and it grows — effectively turning a small diamond shard into a bigger diamond, simply by adding gas and heat.
It takes about 10 weeks to go from carbon seed to marketable diamond. But considering mined diamonds take literal eons to form, 10 weeks doesn't seem so bad.
Unlike other "fake" diamonds like cubic zirconia, the differences aren't really visually perceptible, and it typically takes a specialized machine to spot the difference.
In 2014, about 360,000 carats of lab-grown diamonds were created, versus 146 million carats of natural diamonds. But lab-grown diamonds are expected to grow in popularity.
It seems that diamond-seeking millennials don't care much whether their diamonds come from the ground or from a lab, so it'll be interesting to see where this technology takes us.