ANU Associate Professor Jodie Bradby said her team – including ANU PhD student Thomas Shiell and experts from RMIT, the University of Sydney and the United States – made nano-sized Lonsdaleite, which ...

First identified in 1967, lonsdaleite is the hardest naturally-occuring mineral ever discovered—yes, it’s even harder than diamonds. Lonsdaleite, however, has only been found in meteorites, suggesting ...

Pop quiz: what is the world’s hardest material? Answer: it’s diamond, of course. Thanks to the crystal structure of diamonds, with carbon atoms arranged into a lattice-like structure, diamond is top ...

Scientists have discovered that an ancient "catastrophic collision" between a dwarf planet and an asteroid is responsible for the creation of a rare and mysterious cosmic gem. The findings, published ...

Editor’s Note: Sign up for CNN’s Wonder Theory science newsletter. Explore the universe with news on fascinating discoveries, scientific advancements and more. Scientists have debated its existence.

In the case of lonsdaleite [hexagonla diamond], compression mechanism also caused bond-flipping, yielding an indentation strength of 152 GPa, which is 58 percent higher than the corresponding value of ...

A collection of 18 rare diamond-bearing meteorites from around the world came from an ancient dwarf planet that smashed into a giant asteroid 4.5 billion years ago, according to new research. The ...

The formation of diamond after applying pressure and heat on graphite is highly relevant to the artificial synthesis of diamond 1,2,3,4, and also for a general understanding of high pressure phase ...

Diamond will always be a girl’s best friend, but it may soon lose favour with industrial drillers. The gemstone lost its title of the “world’s hardest material” to man-made nanomaterials some time ago ...