How De Beers Learned to Love Lab-Grown Diamonds

Diamonds are made in labs by subjecting "seeds" to intense pressure and heat in order to mimic the conditions in which they are created underground, or through a process where carbon atoms are grown inside a gas chamber. They are chemically identical to mined diamonds, a truth that factored into the US Federal Trade Commission's July decision to drop the word "natural" from its official definition of what constitutes a diamond, allowing synthetic manufacturers to market their products as "real" diamonds.

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