Diamonds in meteorites contain a tracer isotope that tells us where to look for more diamonds.

The tracer isotope is excess Xe-136, enriched to about twice its normal value [Nature 277 (1979) 615-620].

The Galileo Mission to Jupiter discovered this same tracer isotope, excess Xe-136, in Jupiter [Meteoritics and Planetary Science 33, A97 (1998) paper 5011].

But if Jupiter contains tons of diamonds, the price of diamonds will drop and they will become about as valuable as a ton of sand.

With kind regards,
Oliver K. Manuel
Former NASA Principal
Investigator for Apollo

If Jupiter contains tons of diamonds they will remain there forever due to the impossibility of retrieving them from such immense pressures and temperatures up through such an immense gravity well. This inability to think about the physics of astronomical objects explains why you are a FORMER NASA PI.

Can't we just make the damn things for the same cost? The wiki article says that they can be inferior or superior depending on the quality. This sounds like the real stuff to me. Choose how big and perfect you want it and let them make one.

The article also mentions devices to decipher between real and synthetic, though I find it amusing that you'd have it tested to find out that your real diamond is inferior and thus more valuable.

Diamonds are rediculously overvalued. They can easily be made in a lab. Most of the apparatices are being kept quite, for the last 50 years, by companies like Zales and da Bears! But on the other hand, most of the patents for these devices have expired. I intend to make my wife a diamond someday, not buy one.

In today's issue (15 July 2010) of Physics World is a related news report "Geologists map likely location of diamonds".

There the ultimate source of diamonds is better explained and referenced:

Primordial diamonds in primitive meteorites, the ultimate source, contain a tracer isotope - excess Xe-136 from the r-process of stellar element synthesis [Meteoritics & Planetary Sciences 29 (1994) 791 and 811; Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta 59 (1995) 115].

The Galileo Mission found this same tracer isotope in the atmosphere of Jupiter, a massive planet with sufficient internal pressure and temperature to produce diamonds [Meteoritics & Planetary Science 33 (1998) A97, paper 5011].

Jupiter contains abundant carbon - the element that forms diamonds - and may contain high abundances of diamonds and actinide elements like Th, U and Pu. These heavy elements were made in the r-process of stellar element synthesis and continue to generate heat in planets today by spontaneous nuclear decay.

Interesting however the DeBeers mines in SA are right in the middle of the largest known impact crater on the planet. The second largest impact crater (Sudbury) on the planet is also its richest nickel deposit.

Coincidence? No. Vredfort would have generated a mantle plume, as would Sudbury. Too bad that badly named dinosaur crater, Chicxulub, hit limestone, nothing there of worth.