After so many years searching for someone to fill the "Blank Space" in her heart, billionaire chanteuse Taylor Swift has, it seems, finally found her person in Kansas City tight end Travis Kelce.After two years of dating, the celebrity couple announced this week that they're engaged to be married in an Instagram post that featured, as seen below, a beautiful photoshoot in a rambling English garden, complete with the caption "your English teacher and your gym teacher are getting married."Almost immediately, folks online began to speculate about Swift's huge, beautiful ring that's as fit for a princess as a pop star. Soon after Kelce and Swift's post went live, spectators began picking apart who designed the ring, who made it, how many carats it boasts, and whether that brilliant and massive diamond.Another hot question sparked by the chunky rock, as seen below from the engagement photos: was it grown conflict-free in a lab, or did it originate in one of the potentially violent mines relied on by the notoriously despicable diamond industry?For the first few questions, the answers are readily available. As People magazine reports, Kelce designed the ring with New York City-based jeweler Kindred Lubeck, whose Artifex Fine Jewelry brand boasts gorgeous vintage-inspired pieces that would fit in well with the "Love Story" singer's classic-yet-millennial aesthetic.In interviews with Vogue, jewelry experts suggested that the 35-year-old songwriter's "old mine-cut" diamond, which is characterized by its rounded edges, could be anywhere between eight and 15 carats, potentially running Kelce up to a million dollars.The question of its provenance is more complex. Though lab-grown diamonds can indeed be cut in the old mine style, the consensus among jewelry experts who have weighed in on the pop star's rock seems to be that its size and brilliance mean it's likely mined, not lab-grown. As the New York Times notes, Lubeck generally works with natural gems, lending credence to that theory."What makes Taylor’s ring particularly captivating is its heritage and rarity," Manhattan jeweler Suzie Saltzman told Vogue. "Natural old mine diamonds are scarce, each one cut by hand centuries ago, often with an open culet — the tiny facet at the bottom of the diamond that, to the untrained eye, can look like a hole.""This hallmark of antique craftsmanship, paired with the diamond’s unique proportions, makes Swift’s ring entirely one-of-a-kind," the jeweler continued.As beautiful as natural gemstones are, they carry with them significant concerns about their relationship to brutal armed conflicts in Sub-Saharan Africa. Starting around 1990 and tapering off somewhat at the turn of the century, militias in countries like Angola, Sierra Leone, and the Democratic Republic of Congo used these "blood" or "conflict" diamonds to buy weapons for their civil wars and insurgencies that are said to have killed millions of innocent people.Are antique gemstones from before that period more ethical? Specifics vary, but as a whole, the diamond industry has for hundreds of years been a cesspool of racism, violence, exploitation and generalized human suffering. You can argue that the harm's already been done, or maybe that diamonds from a specific region are better or worse than others, but the entire picture is icky.That's why, if Swift's diamond is in fact a natural antique, it would be surprising given her previous endorsement of lab-grown diamonds — including earrings she wore just a few months ago in another photoshoot, from the high-end ethical jewelry brand VRAI, which fabricates diamonds in a facility that it says is entirely carbon-neutral.It's not just about the single diamond on Swift's ring, either. Due to her massive stardom, her consumption choices will inspire other consumers across the world — so if she'd chosen to source and promote a beautiful lab-grown diamond, it would have been an opportunity to promote sustainable and ethical gems over nastier options.Of course, though she occasionally wades into politics, criticism of Swift's lifestyle choices are nothing new; her expansive use of a private jet, for instance, has inspired years of debate over the merits of the billionaire singer's carbon footprint.While there's still a small chance that the diamond in Swift's engagement ring is a lab-grown gem cut immaculately to look antique — and we've reached out to both Lubeck, the jeweler who made the ring, and to Swift's representation to ask about specifics — it seems, given all the hype from jewelers in the press, that it's the real thing.And that would be shame, albeit just one more example of Swift playing the anti-hero.More on Taylor Swift: Taylor Swift Slams Republican Use of AI to Deepfake Her Into Endorsing TrumpThe post Is Taylor Swift’s Engagement Ring an Ethical Lab-Grown Diamond, or a Horrible Blood-Soaked Conflict Diamond? appeared first on Futurism.