Hasta La Ideas

Once upon a time, human beings were biodegradable. But with modern-day corpses shot full of embalming chemicals before being sealed inside metal coffins, it will be a long time, if ever, before those bodies go back into the earth.

The alternate method of cremation, of course, turns human bodies into ash; and now Swiss company Algordanza has taken it a step further, by figuring out how to compress that ash into diamonds. For US $5,000 to $22,000, your remains, or those of a loved one, can be turned into as many as nine diamonds, presumably depending on the volume of ash. And what’s fascinating is that there is some color variation:

Most of the stones come out blue, [Algordanza CEO Rinaldo] Willy says, because contains trace amounts of boron, an element that bone formation. Occasionally, though, a diamond pops out white, yellow or close to black – Willy’s not sure why. Regardless, he says, “every diamond from each person is slightly different. It’s always a unique diamond.”

(more…)