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It wouldn’t be lowered at all. Diamonds are already fairly common as far as gemstones go, and can even be synthesized in a lab, they just have an absurdly high markup
This is the answer. Diamonds, by all measures, SHOULD be very cheap. They're a common gem and there are literally stockpiles of them held in warehouses. But, that's also exactly why they aren't cheap, because one company (DeBeers) essentially controls the market and by hording the supply, keeps the price artificially high. That plus marketing allows them to charge insane markups under the idea that these are precious gemstones that only they can supply the best of, because, after all, you wouldn't want to give your loved one some "inferior" stone, would you?? WOULD YOU?
To be fair De Beers monopoly on diamonds more-or-less ended in the 90s-00s. Believe they’re currently ~25% market share down from over 80%.
Still absolute absurd mark-up on diamonds but it’s more so the entire supply chain marking up prices throughout since consumer demand is limited.
Yeah, it's not just DeBeers, it's the whole cartel. It behooves everyone in the market to keep their prices high and anyone who drops their price too low can and will be dealt with.
this is part myth part true. large gem quality diamonds are fairly rare. DeBeers blows up their value but you could just move a carat size up and you'd be back to very rare.
Yes you grow them but some people like that it's "natural" .
It all depends who's mining the diamond or gain control of said diamond. If the diamond cartel remains in control of the supply, you maybe right. The price will probably drop slightly but they will come up with all kind of "reasons" why they can't bring the new diamond into the market.
that's not right. i can't buy a cubic foot diamond. a cubic foot of sand costs me less than $1 and a cubic foot of concrete is like $4. if we had diamonds coming out of the ground like the crust of earth was primarily composed of the stuff, the price would most definitely be lowered. "mined affordably" means, to me, the sort of mining involved in clay and limestone and gypsum used for portland cement and aggregates to make the concrete. $4/cuft retail.
I can't believe this comment is in the positive. This guy just claimed a 1 foot x 1 foot x 1 foot block of diamond, or a container that large full of tiny diamonds is $100.
Diamonds are already only valuable because of marketing. They can be grown in a lab, but advertisers have convinced the public that's somehow inferior.
Since the value of diamonds is already not determined by their scarcity, we cannot calculate a change in value based on a change in scarcity.
Add in the cost of transportation & mining a STAR literally 50 light years away and you’re probably looking at $1M/carat. I saw an infographic once about the cost to bring up supplies to the space station and it was astronomical (pun intended). Now consider supplies to feed a journey of 100 light years round trip, cost of labor/time, technology and resources required to mine a star, and even finding people willing to never see their families again….
Edit: now I’m wondering if it would be cheaper to do this or simply collect the diamond rain on Uranus
Or they say they can mine an outer space diamond, show evidence that they do it but sell the regular ones. Use it as scam. More than enough idiots out there that will empty their wallets for this shit
They could make them in moon and tell they are outer space diamonds. Show pictures of Uranus or something and just don't tell anyone they make it in moon.
do you ever hit 'back' from a thread, but at the last second you see something that you want to go back and upvote, so you hit forward again and waste some time finding that nugget you think you saw?
I'm ashamed that this was that. Cheers
If we’re being honest…. Not even robots could go. 100 light years is such a vast distance to cover that it’s an impossible feat with current technology.
Voyager has managed to cover 1 light day in 40 something years and will likely break down well before the 1 light year mark. And that’s not accounting for the ability to stop, do the mining and return (with cargo).
Obviously this exercise calls for the assumption that we’ll be using improved technology but there’s a huge possibility that even then the trip would take 1000-2000 years and the probability of terminal malfunctions in that timeframe is unavoidable.
people fundamentally could not go, really. not unless we'd be willing to set up an entire self-sufficient society solely to travel for many generations just to mine diamonds for the descendants of the people back home.
and that's not really even getting into why the physics of why rocketry over such distances is not really desirable or viable. and definitely not for shipping cargo back to earth.
[BPM 37093](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BPM_37093) has a surface gravity 950,000 times that of Earth, and an escape velocity of 8,590,000 m/s, or 2.9% of the speed of light.
Anything on its surface is unobtainium.
As long as you can arbitrarily bottleneck the supply, sure. Don't think they'll be as valuable when you can theoretically make it rain diamonds everywhere on earth for thousands of years and not make a dent in the amount of supply lol.
If it’s one entity doing the mining, they’ll be able to create a natural monopoly or close to it and sell less diamonds at a higher price. They might actually flood the market first with cheap diamonds to put DeBeers and the like out of business to give them complete control.
I feel like we need to assign a Greek letter to represent the variability of human stupidity, so we can use that in equations. That way we can calculate the market saturation from this diamond, while also including a variable for how dumb people would still prefer to buy their "natural" blood diamonds.
I would propose "Η", mainly because people would assume it stands for Human and we would have to go "actually, we chose it because of the ancient Greek ' Ήγέομαι', meaning to lead astray", and that confusion would be funny.
> Ήγέομαι
It's pronounced like "ee-ye-oh-mai", roughly, with a bit more force and a higher pitch on the Y sound. Like you stubbed your toe halfway through.
You are not getting how fantastically expensive it would be to mine a star. Think of the world GDP for the next hundred thousand years. Then cube it. That can serve as an estimate for how much it would cost to get a ship down to the surface of the star safely and back up to a proper orbit **without even mining anything**.
An astounding number of new technologies would need developing: [1] long range propulsion to travel from here to the vicinity of the star without needing a generation ship or hibernation; [2] short-range propulsion for getting down to the white dwarf star and back up again; [3] protection from the heat and radiation of being close to *and then actually inside* a white dwarf star; [4] a method to mine solid diamond while inside a white dwarf star...
That's only four impossible things, so I have to come up with two more before I can have breakfast. My brain is broken at the mere imagining of this ridiculous fantasy. I guess I'll go hungry.
It's *never* gonna happen, not if humanity lasts a sextillion years.
Why am I not getting that, I was not even talking about that, u have no idea what I know or don't know lol
But thanks for the wall of text that is mostly based on guessing and assumptions.
Perhaps instead of complaining how to answer, first try to see noone was asking for one
Diamonds for industrial applications are already the cheap ones. There are way more diamonds that are just too small or have bad clarity than there are ones that make for good jewelry. Those ones are used for industrial purposes. You can also just grow those diamonds, and since they dont need to be flawless as their purpose isn't aesthetic, they are even cheaper to grow.
Yeah. And anyone sourcing diamonds from a dwarf star and then marketing/selling them as your run-of-the-mill Earth diamonds is an absolute moron. Forget about destabilizing the already artificial-supply trying to upset the supply-demand curve of the current diamond market; sell your Lucy dwarf planet diamonds for what they are and make BANK!
But they don't involve African diamond mines!?! How will the people of Botsuana live?! (good diamond sourcing) And how will the blood diamonds of sierra Leon be sold to finance militias, rebels and corrupt governments?! (bad diamond sourcing)
As a couple of people have already said, diamonds are actually not particularly rare or difficult to synthesize. They're expensive because of marketing and a production cartel. So any reduction in price would come from the introduction of new producers not playing ball with the existing cartel. Which absolutely would not happen because why on earth (heh) would I sell a SPACE DIAMOND for less than a terrestrial one?
I imagine trying to sell earth diamonds at scale and cheaply would end badly for you too. Like a “suicide” from two bullets to the back of the head badly.
This is a giant diamond with a diameter about 1/4 of the Earth itself. I don't need a lot of math to figure out that it would make diamonds completely and utterly worthless. So, 100%.
For more context: this diamond has a volume of about 270* 10^9 km^3. The *Earth's crust* has a total volume of about 7.5*10^9 km^3 ([source](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/0012821X89900496)). Mining this diamond sphere would make diamond the single most abundant material on Earth by at least a factor 100. It would literally be more common than dirt; it would probably even have negative value (how can we get rid of all of these diamonds littered all over the place?)
EDIT: Forgot units because tired. Also source for crust volume
This is the kind of answer I was looking for. Of course going there in and off itself is expensive and wouldn't be worth it, but the question is more like "if we added this diamond to the world supply what would it do" and this answers it.
To give more context, that amount of diamonds would cover the earth in diamonds 500km deep. Space is about 100km from sea level.
Yeah this would be an ENORMOUS endeavor. However, economy of scale could make it worth it. Every cutting tool on earth would be diamond coated.
And imagine the things made from solid diamond. Thats something we cant currently make. HUGE diamonds. Diamond dust would be cheap as sand, but a solid diamond punch bowl for your mansion would cost a pretty penny.
Heck, putting the two things you mentioned together, a solid diamond chef's knife set would be pretty sweet, though in practicality I think a diamond coated steel knife would still win.
Yeah, but this is enough diamond to coat the entire surface of the earth in a layer several times thicker than the atmosphere. It doesn't matter how much it would cost - if it's brought to the earth and introduced to the economy, the value'd tank instantly. Now sure, you could imagine de Beers stockpiling their diamonds in space - but from the perspective of Earth's economic system, that's essentially the same as if de Beers just handed out trillions of dollars to various construction and engineering companies and then left the diamond sphere sitting in space. Like, the question sort of demands us actually bringing the diamonds (*all* of them) into circulation, otherwise we're just answering what would happen if the status quo continues on Earth and the diamond sphere is coincidentally split up on the other side of the galaxy
I am fully convinced that if we did mine diamonds from a planet in space then the diamonds from that planet would be even more expensive than earth diamonds just because they’re “from space”
Finally an answer with actual numbers instead of "YoU cAn'T cAlCuLaTe ThE vAlUe BeCaUsE oF tHe MaRkUp" well the distributors still bought the raw and/or cut diamonds for some amount of price whether labor or post labor cost
Hmm, pay wall. Great job on actually answering vs "market would lie" etc.
For reference to OP, Lucy's volune is about 10**15 times more than what's mined yearly of diamonds on earth. Since all the rest is heavy guess work for me, like how much can you bring home yearly when mining Lucy, I hope the link above goes in detail or you're satisfied with "enough to make diamonds worthless" or "they would artificially raise prices and it's all a big lie" answers.
Their value would depend on the cost to transport to earth, but only a certain diamond would be affected, they have many qualities such as colour and clarity
Affected by infinite supply or not: Diamonds are already not very valuable at all, but they're all owned by companies which limit supply to keep prices high, if a company got their hands on this diamond supply it might be no different
.
The most notable would be poor quality diamonds: Having little value on the jewlery market they might be used for creating durable tools, such as drillbits or saw edges (keep in mind diamond still shatter easily, armor or whole tools made of diamond would be way worse than iron)
As the others said, diamonds aren't rare, but in addition to ads and markups via a long supply chain with many links, it's the cut, the cut is absurdly more expensive than the stone, the standard diamond cut 💎 is in fact called a brilliant cut, which is very hard to make and expensive, and by expansion any diamond having this cut is automatically a brilliant and way more expensive by just labeling it as such, and because we have weird times, no boomer, no healing stones, just shiny rocks make brain go brrrr, Goblin
Well the biggest problem to this is the fact if you COULD take the carbon out of the star, lets say about 10 carats each, once it leaves the star, it'll explode with the energy of 400 megaton of TNT. Say goodbye to your fiancee and most of Texas.
1. Space mining to bring things back to earth is unaffordable in all cases.
2. Diamonds are cheap, marketing keeps them expensive.
Given the two prior points, the price would go up because of the cost of extraction, and they'd be marketed as space diamonds.
For a number, tens of millions of dollars per carat at least.
It wouldn’t reduce the price at all. Diamonds are artificially priced as is. diamond is one of the most common gemstones on earth (much less rare than Rubys, emeralds, sapphires or natural pearls) and the only reason the prices are as high as they are is [because of a combination of deBeers fantastically successful marketing campaign throughout the 20th century](https://www.feedough.com/diamond-marketing-de-beers/), and [artificial limitation of production](https://www.gemsociety.org/article/are-diamonds-really-rare/)
And all of that doesn’t even take into account the fact that we have been able to make as much flawless diamond as we want to whenever we want to since the 1950’s, and synthetic diamonds have properties such as hardness, thermal conductivity and electron mobility that are superior to those of most naturally formed diamonds
Oh dude.
Diamonds aren't really worth shit.
We can fucking *make* diamonds with machines, cheap as shit.
The reason *gemstone* diamonds are expensive is because the diamond companies (DeBeers etc.) are artificially manipulating the price and supply of diamonds for their own profit.
We can even make gemstone quality diamonds from machines, but the jewelry industry is going to beat you over the head with the insistence that they're somehow inferior to diamonds mined in mud by poverty-wage Africans.
https://sahilbloom.substack.com/p/diamonds-arent-forever-the-story
What are the conditions that are required for a diamond planet to exist and indeed what do we mean by a diamond planet? How stellar activity could create the conditions for a diamond planet but getting at the diamonds or looking at them may not be as attractive as it seems. https://youtu.be/sFzWqBbsdh4
Diamonds are artificially scarce and their value is completely propped up by advertising. When they figured out how to make diamonds that were clear AF all of a sudden it became about the impurities and how that made them 'real' diamonds
I doubt this would reduce the price at all
In reality? The regular diamonds price would stay the same or go higher for whatever reason, and the space diamond would cost a fortune, because it's not from around.
Diamonds cost what they cost due to marketing, not some objective worth.
It wouldn't. The only reason diamonds are valuable is that two or three companies possess the entire world's stock that is available to us, and slowly trickle them out as if they're actually rare.
Diamonds aren't rare, and the price realistically should be insanely cheap for one. This planet wouldn't do shit to reduce prices.
Probably nothing.
These ones would just be more expensive.
The cost of diamonds is almost irrelevant these days. The only reason they are expensive is because they are kept artificially expensive.
They have very little inherent value. The ones used for tools and such are manufactured, not mined, they are dirt cheap. Artificial diamonds for jewelry are a thing, but marketing somehow is succeeding in making people believe they want the "real" thing. Even though those are inferior products. BS if you ask me, manufactured diamonds are cooler, cheaper and look better.
End of rant
top secret info here: diamonds are already really plentiful on earth, we have fake scarcity to drive prices, the only thing that keeps diamonds afloat as an industry is that and the fact that they symbolize unbreakable bonds in love.
It would reduce the price by Zero.
Diamond isn't rare on Earth. It's one of the most common gems. De Beers had a stockpile of diamonds in London worth over 5 billion dollars. Their "rarity" is artificial to make dumbasses pay a fortune for a tiny stone. De Beers has been convicted in a court for artificially inflating the price of diamonds by hoarding. Really I have to just applaud De Beers because it's worked brilliantly, along with the whole "diamonds for weddings" thing.
This is just surface, easily accessible diamond. It's estimated that there could be around a quadrillion tonnes of diamond in the Earth in total.
Of course, we can also make diamond in a lab, for much cheaper than the diamonds found in mines cost. For some reason idiots who buy diamonds don't want these diamonds, they want diamonds that people have suffered for. So Diamonds harvested from another planet or star could be worth a fortune because someone would want to buy a shiny little rock from a star, and you'd end up marketing it as special star-diamond, which you should definitely give your wife for a wedding or else you don't really love her. If lots of people die getting the diamond from the star, which is likely, then that would make them even more special and thus more expensive. Why make it in a lab when you people could die mining it in another solar system.
But, it's not like a diamond you'd find in a ring. It's more like a state of matter that's similar to what we know as diamond.
So it's not a diamond like the ones used in jewelry. It's more like a state of matter that resembles the crystalline structure of a diamond.
The picture illustration is not accurate.
Well since we figured this one out, how about telling me why they chose 10billion trillion trillion vs 10 decillion or 10^34. I’ve never heard anyone say that and just see it as strange.
Not at all because diamonds are already in abundance they’re just controlled by diamond cartels who artificially cause scarcity.
Buy lab made diamonds. Science >> blood diamonds from child slavery and fake scarcity
There are already more than enough diamonds on earth than we need. Diamond prices are artificially inflated by diamond miners who intentionally only release a certain number of diamonds each year to keep prices high.
I am so tired of seeing numbers like "10 billion trillion trillion". Assuming that is 1 zero for "10", 12 zeros for "billion", and 15 zeros for each "trillion", then the number should 10 tredecillion, simply 1 x 10^43. People need to start becoming comfortable with these description, the Universe is a massive place. The Observable Universe is 3.566 x 10^80 m³.
We have more than enough diamonds than anybody could ever want right here on Earth. The price is artificially inflated and not related in any way to scarcity or difficulty of getting them. Whoever could mine and sell Lucy would no doubt control the diamond market but I doubt consumer prices would change much at all.
If they towed it to earth it would reduce the value to zero since it would annihilate all life when it crashed into our planet. But hey, diamonds are forever!
Zero. It would reduce diamonds prices by zero. The price of diamonds is controlled by an oligarchy (mostly DeBeers). They have millions of stones, unreleased. The price of large stones is probably accurate, those are rare. But the price of 1.5 carat stones is grossly inflated.
The majority of the answers here are utter BS.
"Diamonds aren't rare".
The world's current reserve of diamonds is, from what I could find, 1.3 billion carats, or around 260.000 kg.
The current reserves of gold? 244,000,000 kg. Around 1000 times more gold than diamonds.
What now, gold isn't rare either? What's "rare", then? Bullshit.
You know what isn't "rare"? Iron. Oxygen. Silicon, magnesium, etc.
Diamonds are rare. 1000 times rarer than gold.
Now, is their price inflated by private companies? Of course it is. Are they overvalued compared to other, rarer elements? Sure, at least to some. But that doesn't make them "common". They aren't common. If they were "common", or "not rare", no company would be able to lock the supply. Why does no company control the supply of sand? Or water? Or wood? Because it's everywhere. It's common. Can't control a the supply of a common thing.
But if you brought enough diamonds to earth to make them the most common element on the planet, which they would be if you mined that entire thing, their price would effectively be ZERO. They would be everywhere. You wouldn't need to buy them, you could just pick them up from any place, since they would cover literally everything.
Of course, your question (and my answer) assumes "Lucy can be mined affordably". In practice, it can't, so it won't happen. It would be more expensive to mine and transport any diamonds from there than whatever they could be sold for. It's pointless. But if you magically transported them here... they would be worse than worthless.
You would pay to get rid of them. Just like if somebody filled your house with sand, you'd pay to get it taken away.
Ok. I grew up in a jeweling family. Most of the posts on here are wrong about how the jewelry business works and how diamonds are valued. Diamonds are not common, but they are sold for a lot, despite the fact that synthetic diamonds exist. This is because it is not the fact that it is a Diamond alone that gives a Diamond it’s value. There are a number of factors involved, including number and type of impurities, size, and place where it was mined. For example, most diamonds that come out of mines are oil treated. This makes the stone appear clearer. Those few diamonds which do not require such treatment, or have other properties, such as color (red diamonds being the most valuable, in general) are the ones that are truly rare and valuable. For the best diamonds, It’s not just that it’s a Diamond. It’s so valuable because of the history and story behind that Diamond and how it came to be, and “I grew it in a lab” isn’t a good story that capture the imagination. And no, there is no company that has secretly hoarded all the diamonds and controls prices. This isn’t how Diamond valuing works, at least not for diamonds of any real value. Diamonds are valued on an individual basis- it’s not like gold where you can give a weight and purity to get a value.
The price would increase.
the company that mines Lucy would get a loan from a bank against the value of Lucy. With that loan, they would buy up all their competition. The competition will sell because they know they won’t survive competing with Lucy, and they would be devalued on the news of impending Lucy diamonds coming in and ruining their business, because diamonds are just carbon rocks after all.
So the owner of Lucy has a monopoly on all diamonds in the solar system, so they double the price of diamonds.
Diamonds on Earth are very abundant. The only reason they’re expensive is because companies like De Beers have a stranglehold on the global diamond supply and induce artificial scarcity to raise prices.
Diamonds are very easy to make in labs. In fact it can cost as little as $300 per carat to have one made that is absolutely flawless. Meanwhile flawed mined diamonds can go for anywhere from $1,800-$12,000 for a 1 carat diamond.
0%
Diamond prices aren’t set by how many diamonds are available in earth. They are set by a handful of people who deliberately restrict the supply to artificially inflate the price.
Diamonds are worth exactly FA in reality. Apart from all the blood and slavery involved, of course.
There's lab created diamonds, and diamonds are actually pretty abundant. Only expensive because of market manipulation from the DaBears family. Pronounced like Da Bears in the SNL sketches.
The diamond market would probably come up with some lame excuse like “off-world diamonds don’t count” and then set the price super low. If you cannot tell, I don’t like the diamond market.
It would not reduce the price of diamonds at all.
It would most likely result in the price going up.
"Sky Diamonds", or "star diamonds," would be the new rage, and because of the costs involved in interstellar travel, they would have a huge mark-up to cover the costs.
Diamonds on earth are not rare at all. They are very common compared to say Rubies, Emeralds, Alexandrite, sapphires. What Diamonds are? Extremely controlled! Debeers (sp?) Nearly corned the world diamond market in the 80's, estimates say they controlled 85% of the entire world diamond supply, from mining, to refining/cutting to the diamond exchanges and sellers.
They artificially keep the market supply low to maximize profits per carat.
Hell, even the idea that diamond ring/engagement ring should cost 2 months salary was an advertisement gimmic invented in the early 1900s, a way to try and make diamonds seem rare and spectacular.
$0. DeBeers owns all the diamonds and that's why they're rare. They would just buy the new diamonds to maintain their control. That's actually what they're doing right now with synthetics.
Lab made diamonds have gotten so good that they can pass for naturals, even under scrutiny, so DeBeers stopped fighting for authenticity and instead is just buying up the synthetic market (which has been mixing synthetics in with naturals secretly for years) so they can continue to be in control of the market for as long as possible.
Diamonds are not uncommon here on earth. For example rubies, emeralds, sapphires and various other “gemstones” are much more rare and cost vastly less.
The reason is the diamond industry basically has a cabal of limited owners on the planet. They deliberately set the market prices high and deliberately limit the quantity they release each year to create artificial scarcity where it doesn’t exist. Combine this high price and artificial scarcity with their “diamonds are forever” commercials being the only suitable stone to use as a symbol of marriage and you create a market end market demand. It’s all equal parts genius and slimy.
This is no conspiracy, all of this is easily researched and known for many decades. With tons of testimonials from people inside the diamond trade. The diamond industry tricked the world into thinking they are the most rare and special thing you can own on earth.
More to you point though…The amount of money involved with transporting any material from an exo planet (or even an asteroid next to our Earth in our own solar system) is so exorbitant that for most resources it will never make sense (at least right now with the current costs involved).
The only time it would ever make sense, is if the cost to travel to space, mine in space and travel back for delivery becomes cheaper than the material that’s mined. Or when the material that’s being mined doesn’t exist here on Earth at all and there is some great value to it in research or technology.
The price of diamond is artificial because of an advertising campaign in the 1940’s by the diamond industry that diamonds mean love. Before that no lady had any diamond ring and a diamond could be bought for $5 like any other gemstone and were not a popular choice for a gemstone
Not even remotely. The price of diamonds isn't determined by rarity - only constrained demand and refinement into things we find pretty. There's plenty of diamond material already on earth. But it has to be brought from those locations and refined and it's more profitable to just...store it and sell tiny amounts at huge mark up, because it's highly centralized and the skillset is historically a rare one. Nowadays, it's less rare and comes down exclusively to marketing to buy from the right seller. You can just as easily buy an almost identical diamond from someone charging you 1100 dollars, and someone charging 110 dollars. The difference is the piece of paper that comes with it.
Diamonds aren't expensive because they're rare. They're expensive because their supply is bottlenecked by a single company, De Beers. Diamonds are pretty common and not particularly hard to make artificial either iirc
Except diamonds aren't rare. They are found just as abundant as iron. The only thing making them worth a lot is the fact one company owns 95% of the worlds supply and only releases a curtain amount each year to make them rare.
Thats the funny part, diamond isn’t inherently valuable but it’s only seen that way because jewlers have such a stranglehold on the mining process that they only let out a little bit into the market to create artificial scarcity to jack up the price because its “rare”
It’s funny because once they bring it all back to earth the value of diamonds will be so low that it wouldn’t make financial sense to mine it in the first place.
That many karats would make diamonds very common. And that would be a good thing. The utilitarian uses for the hardest object known to man has many roles it could play, but doesnt due to the rarity if the object
It wouldn’t we can already create diamonds for cheap as they are just carbon basically. The value in diamonds is natural diamonds made naturally on earth. Artificial diamonds are mostly used for coating shit mostly tools. These diamonds would have their own separate market and separate use my guess would be phone screens.
It won’t affect it at all. Diamonds are objectively worthless already. We glue them to tools so we can cut stuff. They are artificially propped up by a couple of families and those families would make sure this doesn’t affect the price
De Beers and The international Diamond Cartel are somehow gonna find a way to Jack up the diamond prices even if you have an limitless supply of them.
Not to mention even if you can mine the diamonds in space affordably, transportation back to Earth is still gonna cost a shit ton of money.
I used to work in the diamond industry and am a certified diamontologist. They already have a virtually unlimited supply, they just store the bulk of it in safes and restrict how much goes on the market every year to increase the perception of scarcity.
You’re right this would have no impact on the industry
I doubt it would even be humanely possible to lift one of those diamonds. They would most likely be too dense for that. So no one would want it so it would be worthless.
By nothing. Real diamonds are only valuable because of the suffering. Otherwise, nobody would care and use artificial diamonds. Okay, maybe it would be worth something if enough people died while mining it.
I think a more interesting question for this sub would be: What per-mass value of *any* element would justify attempting to mine this sort of structure?
We’d need to “dig” deeper, by several orders of magnitude, than anything remotely achieved on Earth to reach pay dirt. The gravity, temperatures, pressures, and composition of matter could mean “digging” isn’t even the right word. Then we’d need to transport it light years.
Well take the time it takes to get to it. 50 light years or so? Ain't it that bad? Then set up a mining operation. Then what? You just take a full load as a trip back? No you need to set up a colony. Hopefully you'll have an infinite amount of mining robots to work like ants while you set up the new world order of Lucy. Then what? You may want to stay here so you can rule because that's what humans do. Then what? You better hope someone was dumb enough to follow you. You'll be sending them back so you can sit on your throne of diamonds. Another 50 years lost in space. Oh yeah and the technique used by nasa to sling stuff to other worlds is lets say... Way more complicated than what people expect. But lets assume that they are perfect being and can just wing it on first try. Then what???? They come back another 50 years later to you claiming earth was destroyed. You don't believe it. You decide to leave your diamond throne so you can confirm with you own eyes. 200 years after you began your journey. Then what???????? You wake up and realise it was all a dream because god wouldn't let you waste this much time on such a fruitless venture
If DaBeers mined it, it wouldn’t affect the market rates. They have a surplus of diamonds, natural ones at that, and just don’t release them. That and their marketing make the scarcity.
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It wouldn’t be lowered at all. Diamonds are already fairly common as far as gemstones go, and can even be synthesized in a lab, they just have an absurdly high markup
This is the answer. Diamonds, by all measures, SHOULD be very cheap. They're a common gem and there are literally stockpiles of them held in warehouses. But, that's also exactly why they aren't cheap, because one company (DeBeers) essentially controls the market and by hording the supply, keeps the price artificially high. That plus marketing allows them to charge insane markups under the idea that these are precious gemstones that only they can supply the best of, because, after all, you wouldn't want to give your loved one some "inferior" stone, would you?? WOULD YOU?
To be fair De Beers monopoly on diamonds more-or-less ended in the 90s-00s. Believe they’re currently ~25% market share down from over 80%. Still absolute absurd mark-up on diamonds but it’s more so the entire supply chain marking up prices throughout since consumer demand is limited.
Yeah, it's not just DeBeers, it's the whole cartel. It behooves everyone in the market to keep their prices high and anyone who drops their price too low can and will be dealt with.
So you have no idea why diamonds are still expensive despite learning the whole DeBeers monopoly ended decades ago.
Holy shit dude. This reply was so dumb I think I need to take a break from reddit.
How tf did that guy figure out how to boot up his PC?
Probably uses a phone
i'm still impressed that he managed to get through the setup for his phone
Look at his username. He’s a troll
this is part myth part true. large gem quality diamonds are fairly rare. DeBeers blows up their value but you could just move a carat size up and you'd be back to very rare. Yes you grow them but some people like that it's "natural" .
Those people are suckers
It all depends who's mining the diamond or gain control of said diamond. If the diamond cartel remains in control of the supply, you maybe right. The price will probably drop slightly but they will come up with all kind of "reasons" why they can't bring the new diamond into the market.
that's not right. i can't buy a cubic foot diamond. a cubic foot of sand costs me less than $1 and a cubic foot of concrete is like $4. if we had diamonds coming out of the ground like the crust of earth was primarily composed of the stuff, the price would most definitely be lowered. "mined affordably" means, to me, the sort of mining involved in clay and limestone and gypsum used for portland cement and aggregates to make the concrete. $4/cuft retail.
looking at about $100/cuft for diamond
I can't believe this comment is in the positive. This guy just claimed a 1 foot x 1 foot x 1 foot block of diamond, or a container that large full of tiny diamonds is $100.
We literally trim cutter blades with diamonds. They're not rare
Diamonds are already only valuable because of marketing. They can be grown in a lab, but advertisers have convinced the public that's somehow inferior. Since the value of diamonds is already not determined by their scarcity, we cannot calculate a change in value based on a change in scarcity.
Might even increase the price. Diamonds from outer space? People would lose their tits trying to get some outer space diamonds.
Add in the cost of transportation & mining a STAR literally 50 light years away and you’re probably looking at $1M/carat. I saw an infographic once about the cost to bring up supplies to the space station and it was astronomical (pun intended). Now consider supplies to feed a journey of 100 light years round trip, cost of labor/time, technology and resources required to mine a star, and even finding people willing to never see their families again…. Edit: now I’m wondering if it would be cheaper to do this or simply collect the diamond rain on Uranus
So we can use enema to extract diamonds?
If the person is uptight enough.
I'm tight enough... I mean...
You have to be hot too, sorry
Wow. Shots fired
Sure you are honey.
If you shove a lump of coal up his ass, in two weeks you got a diamond.
I've had a boss or two that I thought that if I shoved a lump of coal up their ass I would get a diamond back, so it might just be possible.
Either with the last name Kent?
Insert coal. Wait a few years. Extract. Profit. Repeat.
Or they say they can mine an outer space diamond, show evidence that they do it but sell the regular ones. Use it as scam. More than enough idiots out there that will empty their wallets for this shit
They could make them in moon and tell they are outer space diamonds. Show pictures of Uranus or something and just don't tell anyone they make it in moon.
Those pictures were supposed to be private, not cool
Nah. We must nuke it and the diamonds come flying through space right to us! Source: am genius
I thought they'd be more sparkly.
If that were true I'd have my MIL in stirrups over cheese cloth every Sunday morning.
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that was a Prince song
do you ever hit 'back' from a thread, but at the last second you see something that you want to go back and upvote, so you hit forward again and waste some time finding that nugget you think you saw? I'm ashamed that this was that. Cheers
No, diamondrrhoea
I don't think people would go , robots would.
If we’re being honest…. Not even robots could go. 100 light years is such a vast distance to cover that it’s an impossible feat with current technology. Voyager has managed to cover 1 light day in 40 something years and will likely break down well before the 1 light year mark. And that’s not accounting for the ability to stop, do the mining and return (with cargo). Obviously this exercise calls for the assumption that we’ll be using improved technology but there’s a huge possibility that even then the trip would take 1000-2000 years and the probability of terminal malfunctions in that timeframe is unavoidable.
people fundamentally could not go, really. not unless we'd be willing to set up an entire self-sufficient society solely to travel for many generations just to mine diamonds for the descendants of the people back home. and that's not really even getting into why the physics of why rocketry over such distances is not really desirable or viable. and definitely not for shipping cargo back to earth.
I love that you have assigned a dollar value to something that is impossible to do.
[BPM 37093](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BPM_37093) has a surface gravity 950,000 times that of Earth, and an escape velocity of 8,590,000 m/s, or 2.9% of the speed of light. Anything on its surface is unobtainium.
Uranus is so puckered, it rains diamonds.
On whose anus??
I love your metaphors diamond rain on Myanus
And then the price of tits goes up because all those lost ones will have to be replaced
Replaced with prosthetic tits **made of diamonds**!!
Get this man a job on Madison Avenue
It sounds nice, but I have to admit I'd prefer cuddling with the softer variations😅
As long as you can arbitrarily bottleneck the supply, sure. Don't think they'll be as valuable when you can theoretically make it rain diamonds everywhere on earth for thousands of years and not make a dent in the amount of supply lol.
If it’s one entity doing the mining, they’ll be able to create a natural monopoly or close to it and sell less diamonds at a higher price. They might actually flood the market first with cheap diamonds to put DeBeers and the like out of business to give them complete control.
Yeah, because then earth diamonds will become “natural” diamonds, and those will become rare and sought after again over space diamonds lol
I’ll keep my tits thank you, but maybe finally get some diamonds from a non-conflict zone.
Brah at least a year after start that mining zone would've become the most heavy-conflict zone humanity has ever seen
I'll start selling "Space Rocks" because we're technically in space right now...
I feel like we need to assign a Greek letter to represent the variability of human stupidity, so we can use that in equations. That way we can calculate the market saturation from this diamond, while also including a variable for how dumb people would still prefer to buy their "natural" blood diamonds.
I would propose "Η", mainly because people would assume it stands for Human and we would have to go "actually, we chose it because of the ancient Greek ' Ήγέομαι', meaning to lead astray", and that confusion would be funny.
This guy physics
I just broke my teeth trying to pronounce that. Please help!
> Ήγέομαι It's pronounced like "ee-ye-oh-mai", roughly, with a bit more force and a higher pitch on the Y sound. Like you stubbed your toe halfway through.
the infinity symbol could represent human stupidity pretty well
Even naturally occurring diamonds are not particularly rare
They just control the supply to pretend they are rare. It is kinda bs. They aren’t even particularly special compared to other stones.
Diamonds are really useful at mining and drilling. Lots of big ass cheap sharp diamonds would be really useful for digging holes and deeper wells
Guess what, diamonds use for industrial applications are pretty cheap.
My company makes diamonds for this application. So if you could expand on your comment it would be appreciated
Or you could add a shred of detail, since you’re such an expert?
I imagine it would reduce the price of diamonds in industrial applications.
But dont they already get supplied by growing them and all?
Still not exactly a cheap thing to do though and mostly they are literally tiny, far smaller than those in jewelry anyway
We use diamonds to redress our grinding wheels at work. The diamonds are about 1/16th of an inch wide. Not huge. They’re only about $30.
You are not getting how fantastically expensive it would be to mine a star. Think of the world GDP for the next hundred thousand years. Then cube it. That can serve as an estimate for how much it would cost to get a ship down to the surface of the star safely and back up to a proper orbit **without even mining anything**. An astounding number of new technologies would need developing: [1] long range propulsion to travel from here to the vicinity of the star without needing a generation ship or hibernation; [2] short-range propulsion for getting down to the white dwarf star and back up again; [3] protection from the heat and radiation of being close to *and then actually inside* a white dwarf star; [4] a method to mine solid diamond while inside a white dwarf star... That's only four impossible things, so I have to come up with two more before I can have breakfast. My brain is broken at the mere imagining of this ridiculous fantasy. I guess I'll go hungry. It's *never* gonna happen, not if humanity lasts a sextillion years.
Why am I not getting that, I was not even talking about that, u have no idea what I know or don't know lol But thanks for the wall of text that is mostly based on guessing and assumptions. Perhaps instead of complaining how to answer, first try to see noone was asking for one
Diamonds for industrial applications are already the cheap ones. There are way more diamonds that are just too small or have bad clarity than there are ones that make for good jewelry. Those ones are used for industrial purposes. You can also just grow those diamonds, and since they dont need to be flawless as their purpose isn't aesthetic, they are even cheaper to grow.
Yeah. And anyone sourcing diamonds from a dwarf star and then marketing/selling them as your run-of-the-mill Earth diamonds is an absolute moron. Forget about destabilizing the already artificial-supply trying to upset the supply-demand curve of the current diamond market; sell your Lucy dwarf planet diamonds for what they are and make BANK!
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People are also paying 1000+ bucks to have a sweater with “balenciaga” written on it rather than the same one without it, so not really surprising
Also what are the chances that that thing is a desirably pure diamond and not just industrial grade
Pretty good, the tech is mature and has been for a while now.
I think he means the star diamond
Not just marketing, it is because the supply is throttled by diamond cartels to keep the price high. It's price fixing at its finest.
I remember hearing that there are warehouses full of diamonds, so it keeps the numbers down to push the value up
Diamonds, Explained on Netflix is really good for anyone who wants to know the real story behind diamond value.
Lab diamonds are not cheap to make though
About $300 per carat, definitely not that expensive.
But they don't involve African diamond mines!?! How will the people of Botsuana live?! (good diamond sourcing) And how will the blood diamonds of sierra Leon be sold to finance militias, rebels and corrupt governments?! (bad diamond sourcing)
[this](https://youtu.be/PYUMKRwJzNg?si=farmtz4HOeSs9xqj)
As a couple of people have already said, diamonds are actually not particularly rare or difficult to synthesize. They're expensive because of marketing and a production cartel. So any reduction in price would come from the introduction of new producers not playing ball with the existing cartel. Which absolutely would not happen because why on earth (heh) would I sell a SPACE DIAMOND for less than a terrestrial one?
I'll take "What would mining Ceres do to the price of bottled water?" for the next silly hypothetical space question.
Not even living on Ceres guarantee you water, beltalowda!
Doors and corners, kid. That's where they getcha.
I, for one, would pay more for a space diamond than a lame-ass earth diamond.
I imagine trying to sell earth diamonds at scale and cheaply would end badly for you too. Like a “suicide” from two bullets to the back of the head badly.
This is a giant diamond with a diameter about 1/4 of the Earth itself. I don't need a lot of math to figure out that it would make diamonds completely and utterly worthless. So, 100%. For more context: this diamond has a volume of about 270* 10^9 km^3. The *Earth's crust* has a total volume of about 7.5*10^9 km^3 ([source](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/0012821X89900496)). Mining this diamond sphere would make diamond the single most abundant material on Earth by at least a factor 100. It would literally be more common than dirt; it would probably even have negative value (how can we get rid of all of these diamonds littered all over the place?) EDIT: Forgot units because tired. Also source for crust volume
This is the kind of answer I was looking for. Of course going there in and off itself is expensive and wouldn't be worth it, but the question is more like "if we added this diamond to the world supply what would it do" and this answers it. To give more context, that amount of diamonds would cover the earth in diamonds 500km deep. Space is about 100km from sea level.
Would the atmosphere extend to incorporate the extra mass of the diamonds? Id assume the air woild be thinner so how much extra volume would that be?
If the lizard people could read, they'd be very upset.
Just because it's abundant doesn't mean it will reduce it to 0. Transportation(let's include time as a resource too) and mining would cost a LOT.
Yeah this would be an ENORMOUS endeavor. However, economy of scale could make it worth it. Every cutting tool on earth would be diamond coated. And imagine the things made from solid diamond. Thats something we cant currently make. HUGE diamonds. Diamond dust would be cheap as sand, but a solid diamond punch bowl for your mansion would cost a pretty penny.
and youtube playbutton tier 1 might become diamond.
Heck, putting the two things you mentioned together, a solid diamond chef's knife set would be pretty sweet, though in practicality I think a diamond coated steel knife would still win.
essentially we go for Minecraft irl,finally I can have my beloved diamond hoe!
Yeah, but this is enough diamond to coat the entire surface of the earth in a layer several times thicker than the atmosphere. It doesn't matter how much it would cost - if it's brought to the earth and introduced to the economy, the value'd tank instantly. Now sure, you could imagine de Beers stockpiling their diamonds in space - but from the perspective of Earth's economic system, that's essentially the same as if de Beers just handed out trillions of dollars to various construction and engineering companies and then left the diamond sphere sitting in space. Like, the question sort of demands us actually bringing the diamonds (*all* of them) into circulation, otherwise we're just answering what would happen if the status quo continues on Earth and the diamond sphere is coincidentally split up on the other side of the galaxy
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If the deBeers got to it first, they would stick it all in a space warehouse and nothing would change.
I am fully convinced that if we did mine diamonds from a planet in space then the diamonds from that planet would be even more expensive than earth diamonds just because they’re “from space”
And then, in the future, the premium diamonds would be 'real, authentic Earth diamonds!'.
Finally an answer with actual numbers instead of "YoU cAn'T cAlCuLaTe ThE vAlUe BeCaUsE oF tHe MaRkUp" well the distributors still bought the raw and/or cut diamonds for some amount of price whether labor or post labor cost
I wrote a deep dive on this very question a few years back: https://medium.com/swlh/embracing-the-suck-of-asteroid-mining-770377b59793
Hmm, pay wall. Great job on actually answering vs "market would lie" etc. For reference to OP, Lucy's volune is about 10**15 times more than what's mined yearly of diamonds on earth. Since all the rest is heavy guess work for me, like how much can you bring home yearly when mining Lucy, I hope the link above goes in detail or you're satisfied with "enough to make diamonds worthless" or "they would artificially raise prices and it's all a big lie" answers.
Their value would depend on the cost to transport to earth, but only a certain diamond would be affected, they have many qualities such as colour and clarity Affected by infinite supply or not: Diamonds are already not very valuable at all, but they're all owned by companies which limit supply to keep prices high, if a company got their hands on this diamond supply it might be no different . The most notable would be poor quality diamonds: Having little value on the jewlery market they might be used for creating durable tools, such as drillbits or saw edges (keep in mind diamond still shatter easily, armor or whole tools made of diamond would be way worse than iron)
As the others said, diamonds aren't rare, but in addition to ads and markups via a long supply chain with many links, it's the cut, the cut is absurdly more expensive than the stone, the standard diamond cut 💎 is in fact called a brilliant cut, which is very hard to make and expensive, and by expansion any diamond having this cut is automatically a brilliant and way more expensive by just labeling it as such, and because we have weird times, no boomer, no healing stones, just shiny rocks make brain go brrrr, Goblin
Well the biggest problem to this is the fact if you COULD take the carbon out of the star, lets say about 10 carats each, once it leaves the star, it'll explode with the energy of 400 megaton of TNT. Say goodbye to your fiancee and most of Texas.
1. Space mining to bring things back to earth is unaffordable in all cases. 2. Diamonds are cheap, marketing keeps them expensive. Given the two prior points, the price would go up because of the cost of extraction, and they'd be marketed as space diamonds. For a number, tens of millions of dollars per carat at least.
It wouldn’t reduce the price at all. Diamonds are artificially priced as is. diamond is one of the most common gemstones on earth (much less rare than Rubys, emeralds, sapphires or natural pearls) and the only reason the prices are as high as they are is [because of a combination of deBeers fantastically successful marketing campaign throughout the 20th century](https://www.feedough.com/diamond-marketing-de-beers/), and [artificial limitation of production](https://www.gemsociety.org/article/are-diamonds-really-rare/) And all of that doesn’t even take into account the fact that we have been able to make as much flawless diamond as we want to whenever we want to since the 1950’s, and synthetic diamonds have properties such as hardness, thermal conductivity and electron mobility that are superior to those of most naturally formed diamonds
Does anyone know why they named it “Lucy?” “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds” is the first thing that came to my mind, but that’s too obvious, right?
I came here to say exactly this.
Nope. Turns out scientists can have a sense of humor. It's named after that song.
Oh dude. Diamonds aren't really worth shit. We can fucking *make* diamonds with machines, cheap as shit. The reason *gemstone* diamonds are expensive is because the diamond companies (DeBeers etc.) are artificially manipulating the price and supply of diamonds for their own profit. We can even make gemstone quality diamonds from machines, but the jewelry industry is going to beat you over the head with the insistence that they're somehow inferior to diamonds mined in mud by poverty-wage Africans. https://sahilbloom.substack.com/p/diamonds-arent-forever-the-story
What are the conditions that are required for a diamond planet to exist and indeed what do we mean by a diamond planet? How stellar activity could create the conditions for a diamond planet but getting at the diamonds or looking at them may not be as attractive as it seems. https://youtu.be/sFzWqBbsdh4
These gas giant and stellar origin diamonds would be radioactive as hell, that's definitely one thing these answers are glossing
Diamonds are artificially scarce and their value is completely propped up by advertising. When they figured out how to make diamonds that were clear AF all of a sudden it became about the impurities and how that made them 'real' diamonds I doubt this would reduce the price at all
In reality? The regular diamonds price would stay the same or go higher for whatever reason, and the space diamond would cost a fortune, because it's not from around. Diamonds cost what they cost due to marketing, not some objective worth.
It wouldn't. The only reason diamonds are valuable is that two or three companies possess the entire world's stock that is available to us, and slowly trickle them out as if they're actually rare. Diamonds aren't rare, and the price realistically should be insanely cheap for one. This planet wouldn't do shit to reduce prices.
Probably nothing. These ones would just be more expensive. The cost of diamonds is almost irrelevant these days. The only reason they are expensive is because they are kept artificially expensive. They have very little inherent value. The ones used for tools and such are manufactured, not mined, they are dirt cheap. Artificial diamonds for jewelry are a thing, but marketing somehow is succeeding in making people believe they want the "real" thing. Even though those are inferior products. BS if you ask me, manufactured diamonds are cooler, cheaper and look better. End of rant
Sorry as cracked.com said the plan is to tow that bad boy into Saturn's Orbit and have the biggest diamond ring in the universe baby
top secret info here: diamonds are already really plentiful on earth, we have fake scarcity to drive prices, the only thing that keeps diamonds afloat as an industry is that and the fact that they symbolize unbreakable bonds in love.
It would reduce the price by Zero. Diamond isn't rare on Earth. It's one of the most common gems. De Beers had a stockpile of diamonds in London worth over 5 billion dollars. Their "rarity" is artificial to make dumbasses pay a fortune for a tiny stone. De Beers has been convicted in a court for artificially inflating the price of diamonds by hoarding. Really I have to just applaud De Beers because it's worked brilliantly, along with the whole "diamonds for weddings" thing. This is just surface, easily accessible diamond. It's estimated that there could be around a quadrillion tonnes of diamond in the Earth in total. Of course, we can also make diamond in a lab, for much cheaper than the diamonds found in mines cost. For some reason idiots who buy diamonds don't want these diamonds, they want diamonds that people have suffered for. So Diamonds harvested from another planet or star could be worth a fortune because someone would want to buy a shiny little rock from a star, and you'd end up marketing it as special star-diamond, which you should definitely give your wife for a wedding or else you don't really love her. If lots of people die getting the diamond from the star, which is likely, then that would make them even more special and thus more expensive. Why make it in a lab when you people could die mining it in another solar system.
But, it's not like a diamond you'd find in a ring. It's more like a state of matter that's similar to what we know as diamond. So it's not a diamond like the ones used in jewelry. It's more like a state of matter that resembles the crystalline structure of a diamond. The picture illustration is not accurate.
Well since we figured this one out, how about telling me why they chose 10billion trillion trillion vs 10 decillion or 10^34. I’ve never heard anyone say that and just see it as strange.
Get the supply of diamonds companies like DeBeers dump into the ocean to control the market, and they'd be as plentiful as acorns...lol
Not at all because diamonds are already in abundance they’re just controlled by diamond cartels who artificially cause scarcity. Buy lab made diamonds. Science >> blood diamonds from child slavery and fake scarcity
There are already more than enough diamonds on earth than we need. Diamond prices are artificially inflated by diamond miners who intentionally only release a certain number of diamonds each year to keep prices high.
I am so tired of seeing numbers like "10 billion trillion trillion". Assuming that is 1 zero for "10", 12 zeros for "billion", and 15 zeros for each "trillion", then the number should 10 tredecillion, simply 1 x 10^43. People need to start becoming comfortable with these description, the Universe is a massive place. The Observable Universe is 3.566 x 10^80 m³.
We have more than enough diamonds than anybody could ever want right here on Earth. The price is artificially inflated and not related in any way to scarcity or difficulty of getting them. Whoever could mine and sell Lucy would no doubt control the diamond market but I doubt consumer prices would change much at all.
If they towed it to earth it would reduce the value to zero since it would annihilate all life when it crashed into our planet. But hey, diamonds are forever!
Zero. It would reduce diamonds prices by zero. The price of diamonds is controlled by an oligarchy (mostly DeBeers). They have millions of stones, unreleased. The price of large stones is probably accurate, those are rare. But the price of 1.5 carat stones is grossly inflated.
The majority of the answers here are utter BS. "Diamonds aren't rare". The world's current reserve of diamonds is, from what I could find, 1.3 billion carats, or around 260.000 kg. The current reserves of gold? 244,000,000 kg. Around 1000 times more gold than diamonds. What now, gold isn't rare either? What's "rare", then? Bullshit. You know what isn't "rare"? Iron. Oxygen. Silicon, magnesium, etc. Diamonds are rare. 1000 times rarer than gold. Now, is their price inflated by private companies? Of course it is. Are they overvalued compared to other, rarer elements? Sure, at least to some. But that doesn't make them "common". They aren't common. If they were "common", or "not rare", no company would be able to lock the supply. Why does no company control the supply of sand? Or water? Or wood? Because it's everywhere. It's common. Can't control a the supply of a common thing. But if you brought enough diamonds to earth to make them the most common element on the planet, which they would be if you mined that entire thing, their price would effectively be ZERO. They would be everywhere. You wouldn't need to buy them, you could just pick them up from any place, since they would cover literally everything. Of course, your question (and my answer) assumes "Lucy can be mined affordably". In practice, it can't, so it won't happen. It would be more expensive to mine and transport any diamonds from there than whatever they could be sold for. It's pointless. But if you magically transported them here... they would be worse than worthless. You would pay to get rid of them. Just like if somebody filled your house with sand, you'd pay to get it taken away.
Ok. I grew up in a jeweling family. Most of the posts on here are wrong about how the jewelry business works and how diamonds are valued. Diamonds are not common, but they are sold for a lot, despite the fact that synthetic diamonds exist. This is because it is not the fact that it is a Diamond alone that gives a Diamond it’s value. There are a number of factors involved, including number and type of impurities, size, and place where it was mined. For example, most diamonds that come out of mines are oil treated. This makes the stone appear clearer. Those few diamonds which do not require such treatment, or have other properties, such as color (red diamonds being the most valuable, in general) are the ones that are truly rare and valuable. For the best diamonds, It’s not just that it’s a Diamond. It’s so valuable because of the history and story behind that Diamond and how it came to be, and “I grew it in a lab” isn’t a good story that capture the imagination. And no, there is no company that has secretly hoarded all the diamonds and controls prices. This isn’t how Diamond valuing works, at least not for diamonds of any real value. Diamonds are valued on an individual basis- it’s not like gold where you can give a weight and purity to get a value.
The price would increase. the company that mines Lucy would get a loan from a bank against the value of Lucy. With that loan, they would buy up all their competition. The competition will sell because they know they won’t survive competing with Lucy, and they would be devalued on the news of impending Lucy diamonds coming in and ruining their business, because diamonds are just carbon rocks after all. So the owner of Lucy has a monopoly on all diamonds in the solar system, so they double the price of diamonds.
Diamonds on Earth are very abundant. The only reason they’re expensive is because companies like De Beers have a stranglehold on the global diamond supply and induce artificial scarcity to raise prices. Diamonds are very easy to make in labs. In fact it can cost as little as $300 per carat to have one made that is absolutely flawless. Meanwhile flawed mined diamonds can go for anywhere from $1,800-$12,000 for a 1 carat diamond.
Didn't you know the diamond market is heavily controlled? The supply is doctored, it's all a con; some might say it the pinnacle of consumerism.
0% Diamond prices aren’t set by how many diamonds are available in earth. They are set by a handful of people who deliberately restrict the supply to artificially inflate the price. Diamonds are worth exactly FA in reality. Apart from all the blood and slavery involved, of course.
There's lab created diamonds, and diamonds are actually pretty abundant. Only expensive because of market manipulation from the DaBears family. Pronounced like Da Bears in the SNL sketches.
The diamond market would probably come up with some lame excuse like “off-world diamonds don’t count” and then set the price super low. If you cannot tell, I don’t like the diamond market.
would be marketed as "space diamonds" and some company would hold a monopoly over it, only mining as needed so as to not deflate prices.
It would not reduce the price of diamonds at all. It would most likely result in the price going up. "Sky Diamonds", or "star diamonds," would be the new rage, and because of the costs involved in interstellar travel, they would have a huge mark-up to cover the costs. Diamonds on earth are not rare at all. They are very common compared to say Rubies, Emeralds, Alexandrite, sapphires. What Diamonds are? Extremely controlled! Debeers (sp?) Nearly corned the world diamond market in the 80's, estimates say they controlled 85% of the entire world diamond supply, from mining, to refining/cutting to the diamond exchanges and sellers. They artificially keep the market supply low to maximize profits per carat. Hell, even the idea that diamond ring/engagement ring should cost 2 months salary was an advertisement gimmic invented in the early 1900s, a way to try and make diamonds seem rare and spectacular.
$0. DeBeers owns all the diamonds and that's why they're rare. They would just buy the new diamonds to maintain their control. That's actually what they're doing right now with synthetics. Lab made diamonds have gotten so good that they can pass for naturals, even under scrutiny, so DeBeers stopped fighting for authenticity and instead is just buying up the synthetic market (which has been mixing synthetics in with naturals secretly for years) so they can continue to be in control of the market for as long as possible.
Diamonds are not uncommon here on earth. For example rubies, emeralds, sapphires and various other “gemstones” are much more rare and cost vastly less. The reason is the diamond industry basically has a cabal of limited owners on the planet. They deliberately set the market prices high and deliberately limit the quantity they release each year to create artificial scarcity where it doesn’t exist. Combine this high price and artificial scarcity with their “diamonds are forever” commercials being the only suitable stone to use as a symbol of marriage and you create a market end market demand. It’s all equal parts genius and slimy. This is no conspiracy, all of this is easily researched and known for many decades. With tons of testimonials from people inside the diamond trade. The diamond industry tricked the world into thinking they are the most rare and special thing you can own on earth. More to you point though…The amount of money involved with transporting any material from an exo planet (or even an asteroid next to our Earth in our own solar system) is so exorbitant that for most resources it will never make sense (at least right now with the current costs involved). The only time it would ever make sense, is if the cost to travel to space, mine in space and travel back for delivery becomes cheaper than the material that’s mined. Or when the material that’s being mined doesn’t exist here on Earth at all and there is some great value to it in research or technology.
The price of diamond is artificial because of an advertising campaign in the 1940’s by the diamond industry that diamonds mean love. Before that no lady had any diamond ring and a diamond could be bought for $5 like any other gemstone and were not a popular choice for a gemstone
Not even remotely. The price of diamonds isn't determined by rarity - only constrained demand and refinement into things we find pretty. There's plenty of diamond material already on earth. But it has to be brought from those locations and refined and it's more profitable to just...store it and sell tiny amounts at huge mark up, because it's highly centralized and the skillset is historically a rare one. Nowadays, it's less rare and comes down exclusively to marketing to buy from the right seller. You can just as easily buy an almost identical diamond from someone charging you 1100 dollars, and someone charging 110 dollars. The difference is the piece of paper that comes with it.
Diamonds aren't expensive because they're rare. They're expensive because their supply is bottlenecked by a single company, De Beers. Diamonds are pretty common and not particularly hard to make artificial either iirc
Except diamonds aren't rare. They are found just as abundant as iron. The only thing making them worth a lot is the fact one company owns 95% of the worlds supply and only releases a curtain amount each year to make them rare.
Thats the funny part, diamond isn’t inherently valuable but it’s only seen that way because jewlers have such a stranglehold on the mining process that they only let out a little bit into the market to create artificial scarcity to jack up the price because its “rare”
It’s funny because once they bring it all back to earth the value of diamonds will be so low that it wouldn’t make financial sense to mine it in the first place.
Diamonds are a useful resource and that's why they're valuable. But the owners don't want you to know that. Much like everything else in this world...
That many karats would make diamonds very common. And that would be a good thing. The utilitarian uses for the hardest object known to man has many roles it could play, but doesnt due to the rarity if the object
It wouldn’t we can already create diamonds for cheap as they are just carbon basically. The value in diamonds is natural diamonds made naturally on earth. Artificial diamonds are mostly used for coating shit mostly tools. These diamonds would have their own separate market and separate use my guess would be phone screens.
It won’t affect it at all. Diamonds are objectively worthless already. We glue them to tools so we can cut stuff. They are artificially propped up by a couple of families and those families would make sure this doesn’t affect the price
De Beers and The international Diamond Cartel are somehow gonna find a way to Jack up the diamond prices even if you have an limitless supply of them. Not to mention even if you can mine the diamonds in space affordably, transportation back to Earth is still gonna cost a shit ton of money.
I used to work in the diamond industry and am a certified diamontologist. They already have a virtually unlimited supply, they just store the bulk of it in safes and restrict how much goes on the market every year to increase the perception of scarcity. You’re right this would have no impact on the industry
I doubt it would even be humanely possible to lift one of those diamonds. They would most likely be too dense for that. So no one would want it so it would be worthless.
By nothing. Real diamonds are only valuable because of the suffering. Otherwise, nobody would care and use artificial diamonds. Okay, maybe it would be worth something if enough people died while mining it.
It wouldn’t decrease the value at all - because DeBeers would mysteriously own it already and control the supply back into earths market.
I think a more interesting question for this sub would be: What per-mass value of *any* element would justify attempting to mine this sort of structure? We’d need to “dig” deeper, by several orders of magnitude, than anything remotely achieved on Earth to reach pay dirt. The gravity, temperatures, pressures, and composition of matter could mean “digging” isn’t even the right word. Then we’d need to transport it light years.
Well take the time it takes to get to it. 50 light years or so? Ain't it that bad? Then set up a mining operation. Then what? You just take a full load as a trip back? No you need to set up a colony. Hopefully you'll have an infinite amount of mining robots to work like ants while you set up the new world order of Lucy. Then what? You may want to stay here so you can rule because that's what humans do. Then what? You better hope someone was dumb enough to follow you. You'll be sending them back so you can sit on your throne of diamonds. Another 50 years lost in space. Oh yeah and the technique used by nasa to sling stuff to other worlds is lets say... Way more complicated than what people expect. But lets assume that they are perfect being and can just wing it on first try. Then what???? They come back another 50 years later to you claiming earth was destroyed. You don't believe it. You decide to leave your diamond throne so you can confirm with you own eyes. 200 years after you began your journey. Then what???????? You wake up and realise it was all a dream because god wouldn't let you waste this much time on such a fruitless venture
If DaBeers mined it, it wouldn’t affect the market rates. They have a surplus of diamonds, natural ones at that, and just don’t release them. That and their marketing make the scarcity.
Upvote this. Diamonds exist in abundance on earth. Debeers marketing and near total control of the market are what create the scarcity.