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  1. Business
5 December 2012

How to turn a dead cat into a diamond

The weeks oddest trend?

By New Statesman

An odd trend has emerged: making your pet into jewellery. Or, in full, cremating your pet and then converting the ashes into gems, and then wearing them.

As Business Insider points out, this makes sense scientifically:

The carbon found in the ashes of cremated remains is that same carbon found in diamonds and other precious stones, and laboratories have been making synthetic gems for decades.

The Wall Street Journal elaborates:

Fabricating a diamond speeds up what happens deep inside the earth naturally. After separating the carbon from other compounds in the remains to produce graphite, the companies put the carbon and a diamond seed crystal into a chamber with thick metal walls that heats it to more than 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit under about 800,000 pounds per square inch of pressure.

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It’s not cheap though: converting a pet into a piece of jewellery can cost between $250 to over $1,400

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