In one of the James Bond movies, To Die Another Day, they mentioned that the diamonds was from Sierra Leon based on the chemistry. Is it possible?
Also, are all diamonds from West Africa, conflict diamonds? How can you be sure you are not buying them?
You can do a search for “blood diamonds” on the board to learn about Debeers and the appalling situation in the diamond industry including modern day slavery. There is a Cecil column or a staff report as well.
Most diamonds come through the Debeers cartel/semi-monopoly and they work hard to keep it that way. They also created the modern diamond market believe it or not. Diamonds have not always been among the most coveted precious stones and diamond rings are a rather modern trend. Debeers controls most of the supply and therfore the price of most diamonds.
Here is the Master’s column:
You could buy a Canadian diamond. They use a registration system to ensure that you know where they came from.
Other than inscribing a registration number on them as Canada does, though, I don’t think there’d be any way to tell where a diamond came from.
Oops, forgot:
You may also want to consider a cultured diamond. They are every bit as real composition-wise as the ones that come out of the Earth, but guaranteed conflict- and DeBeers-free.
Here’s the Wired article about them. It’s a bit dated now but still worth a read.
In the referenced movie, IIRC, they made up some hooey about the diamonds being "chemically identical"to conflict diamonds. Since diamonds would all be carbon anyhow, what I assume they meant was that the impurities, the traces of other chemicals, were consistent with the profile of diamonds from Sierra Leone.
I’d venture a guess that even very fine stones must have some traces of impurity, and that someone who was experienced enough could make a guess based on analysis as to where the rock came from. I’ve talked with jewelers who claimed to be able to do it by sight, not sure how cromulent that information was.
If you knew the characteristics of the surrounding matrix the diamond was mined from and had a baseline to compare it to, you could probably narrow it down to region of origin, but you’d most likely have to use gas chromatography or whatever the geological equivalent is.
The Apollo company referenced above is almost at the point that they can make any diamond within reason they choose. They are real diamonds and they can introduce imperfections to.
Even if it’s pure carbon, you might still be able to do something with isotope ratios. I’ve heard of archeologists using isotope ratios to, for instance, determine from what mine the lead in a bullet came from. I’m not sure, though, whether carbon isotope ratios vary enough to make this practical for diamonds.
I also wonder if any sort of chemical method could be used which would leave the diamond more-or-less intact. I would expect that most methods would require breaking off, burning, or otherwise destroying some of the diamond, but I’m not sure how much would be needed.
Except they can’t make large, white ones yet.
As to the OP, there is no practical way that anyone can determine where a diamond comes from. Emphasis on the “practical.”
The book Blood Diamonds is a fascinating and horrifying look in to the conflict diamond industry.
IIRC, it is possible to tell what kind of rock a diamond comes from and that will narrow the region down a bit. But obviously rocks don’t follow country borders. There is a certification process, but it’s still pretty easy to work around that and obtain fake certifications.
I think you’re wrong. If you could, explain how you can tell what kind of rock a diamond comes from? I’'m not even sure what this means.
Explain what kind of certification you’re talking about, what lab, etc. And can you give any evidence of fake certificates? From what lab? I"m not aware of labs that certify where a diamond comes from.
I’m not talking about labs (though there are those, too- I think they just had an article in National Geographic with some great pics of the lab in NY where they record things like imperfections, etc. for future identification) but rather certificates given at export regarding the diamond’s origin.
As for the “rock” thing, it dawns on me that I got that mixed up with an article I read about how they can find the origin of human remains based on the minerals in the bones, which they can trace to local rocks. Sorry about that.