What is harder than diamond?

It is well-known since the late 20th-century that there's a form of carbon that's even harder than diamonds: carbon nanotubes. By binding carbon together into a hexagonal shape, it can hold a rigid cylindrical-shaped structure more stably than any other structure known to humankind.
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Is there anything tougher than a diamond?

The scientists found Q-carbon to be 60% harder than diamond-like carbon (a type of amorphous carbon with similar properties to diamond). This has led them to expect Q-carbon to be harder than diamond itself, although this still remains to be proven experimentally.
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Is there a stone harder than diamond?

(PhysOrg.com) -- Currently, diamond is regarded to be the hardest known material in the world. But by considering large compressive pressures under indenters, scientists have calculated that a material called wurtzite boron nitride (w-BN) has a greater indentation strength than diamond.
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What metal is harder than diamond?

Moissanite, a naturally occurring silicon-carbide, is almost as hard as diamond. It is a rare mineral, discovered by the French chemist Henri Moissan in 1893 while examining rock samples from a meteor crater located in Canyon Diablo, Arizona. Hexagonal boron-nitride is 18% harder than diamond.
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What is the hardest substance in the world?

Indeed, diamond is the hardest material in the world. Material hardness is a property determined by scratch resistance. A substance can only be scratched by something of equal or greater hardness. Therefore, only a diamond can scratch another diamond.
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Is there anything stronger than diamond?



What is the 2 hardest material on earth?

Boron nitride

c-BN is chemically and thermally stable, and is commonly used today as a superhard machine tool coating in the automotive and aerospace industries. But cubic boron nitride is still, at best, just the world's second hardest material with a Vickers hardness of around 50 GPa.
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What is the most unbreakable thing in the world?

Related
  • Diamond. Unmatched in its ability to resist being scratched, this much-loved gemstone ranks the highest in terms of hardness. ...
  • Graphene. ...
  • Spider silk. ...
  • Carbon/carbon composite. ...
  • Silicon carbide. ...
  • Nickel-based super-alloys.
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What is the toughest gem?

Diamond is the hardest natural material in the world. However, it's also brittle. Scientifically speaking, hardness measures the ability to resist scratching, nothing more.
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What can break a diamond?

While there may not be many naturally-occurring materials out there that are stronger than diamonds, certain man-made metals like tungsten and steel have a higher tensile strength. That means a direct hit with an ordinary hammer can absolutely break a diamond.
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What gem is the hardest?

The diamond is the hardest gemstones, while talc is a very soft mineral. The scale by which the hardness of minerals is measured is the Mohs Hardness Scale.
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What gem is stronger than a diamond?

While diamonds and lonsdaleite are both made of carbon - get ready for this - the former has a cubic atomic structure, and the latter has a hexagonal structure. So what's the big difference? That hexagonal structure makes the stone 58% stronger than regular diamonds.
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What are the five hardest stones?

Below I will discuss the hardest gems and minerals found on the planet, according to the Mohs scale.
  • Diamond: 10 on the Mohs scale. ...
  • Boron: 9.5 on the Mohs scale. ...
  • Stishovite: 9.5 on the Mohs scale. ...
  • Moissanite: 9.25 on the Mohs scale. ...
  • Titanium Carbide: 9-9.5 on the Mohs scale. ...
  • Corundum: 9 on the Mohs scale.
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What is more precious than diamond?

There are many gems that are more valuable than diamonds. Emeralds, sapphires, rubies, garnets, and alexandrite, just to name a few.
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Is Obsidian stronger than a diamond?

The hardest mineral on the scale, diamond, is given a hardness rating of 10. Since obsidian is rated at 5-6 on Moh's Hardness Scale, it is not stronger than a diamond; it's softer than a diamond. The diamond is one of the hardest natural substances known to scientists.
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What is the strongest element in the universe?

The strongest material in the universe may be the whimsically named "nuclear pasta." You can find this substance in the crust of neutron stars. This amazing material is super-dense, and is 10 billion times harder to break than steel.
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Can fire destroy a diamond?

A diamond is the hardest natural substance on earth, but if it is placed in an oven and the temperature is raised to about 763º Celsius (1405º Fahrenheit), it will simply vanish, without even ash remaining. Only a little carbon dioxide will have been released.
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Does diamond burn in fire?

Although diamond requires a higher temperature to burn, it does indeed burn via normal carbon combustion. You can even burn diamond in a regular flame if you are patient and conditions are right. To accelerate the burning of diamond, you can give it more heat and more oxygen.
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What can chip a diamond?

Chips typically occur when the girdle (edge) or point of a diamond strikes something hard. Bathroom and kitchen countertops, as well as jewelry items with diamonds worn next to each other, are common causes of chips.
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What is the most cursed stone?

The Hope Diamond

Arguably the most famous and most cursed precious gemstone in history, this 45.52-carat sparkler has a long and storied past. The Hope Diamond has been blamed for a laundry list of tragedies, including but not limited to: beatings, stabbings, murder, insanity, and suicide.
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What is the 2nd hardest stone?

Moissanite: The Second Hardest Mineral in Nature after Diamond. The colors seen in moissanite from the Mount Carmel area of northern Israel range from dark blue to light green. photo by Aurélien Delaunay. Moissanite is the name given to naturally occurring silicon carbide and to its various crystalline polymorphs.
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Which gemstone is unbreakable?

Diamond. The hardest naturally occurring material on earth that can only be cut or scratched with another diamond. Its name comes from the ancient Greek adámas meaning "unbreakable".
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Which thing Cannot break?

An element is the substance which cannot be broken down further into simpler components by a chemical reaction.
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What's the hardest material to break?

Graphene remains the strongest material ever measured and, as Professor Hone once put it, so strong that "it would take an elephant, balanced on a pencil, to break through a sheet of graphene the thickness of Saran Wrap.”
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What element is stronger than diamond?

The structure of boron nitride in its wurtzite configuration is stronger than diamonds. Boron nitride can also be used to construct nanotubes, aerogels, and a wide variety of other fascinating applications.
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