cultured diamonds have been around for awhile but they have been way too expensive to scale up in volume. There is a new technology that does create real diamonds inexpensively. The significance of the technology is not that women will get finger diamonds on the cheap. Rather the significance of the technology is that it will enable the computer chip industry to make the next quantum leap in processing power. How important is this? Ask any high tech executive on the West Coast and they will tell you that the trend right now is that the center of gravity for high tech is shifting over to Asia.
Cheap, consistant diamonds produced for computer chips --and produced in the America would return the future of high tech to the USA.
So how hot does that make this technology? Its hotter than cigarette boats. Its not as hot as the A bomb research in WWII. But it is about on the same level with the human genome project of the late 90's that has made gene splicing technology into a major industry in the USA (and Maryland particularly) and the Semitech Project of the early 90's that restored US leadership in the computer chip making industry-- that was at that time slipping away to Asia.
Here's two links on the subject.
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.09/diamond.html http://science.slashdot.org/science/03/08/12/2112237.shtml?tid=126