Cheap new ‘cultured’ diamonds are almost impossible to tell from real ones

People working in the £59 billion diamond-mining industry are facing a threat from man-made stones grown in labs.

The stones are now extremely difficult to tell from real diamonds – with the Diamond Producers Association now using a marketing slogan, ‘Real is rare.’

But the stones – grown using a lab process from methane gas – are increasingly high-quality, says Professor Oliver Williams of Cardiff University.

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To the human eye, there’s literally no difference between the lab-grown stones and ‘real’ diamonds, Sky news reported.

The stones are often on sale for 40% less than mined diamonds, and are already widely used in industry.

Williams said, ‘The diamonds are purer than anything you would see in nature. With the best growers, less than one atom in a trillion is an impurity.

‘It’s man actually beating nature. We’re perfecting it.

‘So for me there’s an emotional thing to that too – because it’s an enormous accomplishment to grow a material that traditionally has been very difficult to grow.’