DPC ·
The diamond dealer had to guess
In this NOVA segment, Neil deGrasse Tyson puts three diamonds in front of New York diamond dealer Ara Arslanian. One is lab-grown. Arslanian examines the polished stones with a loupe and takes a guess. He picks the wrong one.
His verdict, from PBS’s transcript:
“I couldn't distinguish which one is manmade and the natural.”
The person admiring your ring over dinner probably won’t have a loupe handy.
Specialized equipment can identify how a diamond grew, and buyers should know what they’re getting. But a machine telling you it came out of the ground doesn’t tell you why or if it would look better on your hand.
We spend an awful lot of time debating a difference this diamond dealer couldn’t see under magnification. If you love the way the lab-grown diamond looks, what, exactly, are you supposed to be missing?