New Material Harder Than Diamond

h4x0r-3l337 writes "Diamond is no longer the hardest substance known to man. Scientists have created a new material, called "aggregated diamond nanorods" by compressing carbon-60 under high heat. From the article: 'The hardness of a material is measured by its isothermal bulk modulus. Aggregated diamond nanorods have a modulus of 491 gigapascals (GPa), compared with 442 GPa for conventional diamond.'"

Comments

hmmm

[Anonymous Coward]

491 gigapascals.... Wow!!!

WTF is a gigapascal?

Re:hmmm

[mad.frog]

And here I thought it was some cool new programming language (presumably a billion times better than old fashioned Pascal...)

Re:hmmm

[Anonymous Coward]

491 gigapascals.... Wow!!! WTF is a gigapascal?

program gigapascal(output);
          procedure WriteResponseHeader;
        begin
                writeln('content-type: text/html');
                writeln
        end;

begin
        WriteResponseHeader;
        writeln('[HTML]');
        writeln('[HEAD]');
        writeln('[TITLE]GigaPascal[/TITLE>');
        writeln('[/HEAD]');
        writeln('[BODY]');
        giga := 0
                  while [ i [less than] 1000000000 ] DO:
                  giga := giga + 1;
                  writeln('[BIG] This is a Gigapascal! How the hell are you? [/BIG]');
                  endfor;
        writeln('[/BODY]');
        writeln('[/HTML]')
end.

[edit requires to get slashdot to accept this]
Any questions?

Re:hmmm

[coolgeek]

Someone give this guy a wedgie. He remembers how to program in Pascal.

Re:hmmm

[Anonymous Coward]

What scares me is this is clearly a pascal CGI script. So what? In fact some people even write their CGI scripts in Perl.

I want...

[Anonymous Coward]

A butter knife made entirely out of THAT!

Ring

[CalcMan]

So I guess this is what she's going to want on her finger now.

Re:Ring

[niteskunk]

"Aggregated diamond nanorods: She'll pretty much have to."

Re:Ring

[alex4u2nv]

Yep, the harder the rock, the harder the punch. Girls are so smart =), thats why we love em!

Re:Ring

[Itchy Rich]

Yep, the harder the rock, the harder the punch. Girls are so smart =), thats why we love em!

You love girls? That's gay!

Re:Ring

[BasilBrush]

She won't be impressed by your nanorod, no matter how hard it is.

General Products?

[bmo]

So when are we going to see a General Products hull constructed out of this?

--
BMO - Imagine a Beowulf Cluster of Kzinti

20% harder, via^H^H^H carbon!

[PlusFiveTroll]

Is this what the viagra ads meant when they said 20% harder?

Enhance your carbon based member now! EXRNZ

Impressive results, you'll be the hardest she's ever seen! Become the new hard you.

--

You cant talk about anything around here without someone thinking about it sexually

Re:To all the posters making jokes about thier wiv

[mad.frog]

Why'd you marry such shallow, pathetic women?

What -- you mean there's some other kind?

Hmm

[aarku]

Anyone else having the sudden urge to get their fiancée one of these bad boys so they can scratch the hell out of lesser gemstones?

Now's the time.

[Petersson]

Get me a plenctor from this material.. I'll pick my guitar and play the hardest rock mankind ever heard..

Re:Sabotage

[pintomp3]

if their wives' rings costs $300:

a) your friends aren't rich
b) you can scratch up the rings with normal sandpaper

Discovery? No way.

[Stuntmonkey]

There's no way these guys can claim priority here. It completely stretches all notions of credulity. I mean, Superman has been transforming coal into diamonds with his bare hands for nearly 60 years now (first mention Action Comics #115; 1947). Together with his optical super-powers, in this case I'm of course referring to what is simplistically referred to as his "heat vision", it's clear that Superman could generate the required pressure and heat with almost no effort. He probably discovered this new diamond stuff by accident when he was like 8 or something. Jeez, I can't believe the crap that makes it through peer review these days.

nuh uh

[i_should_be_working]

This can't possibly be harder than adamantium. Otherwise Captain America would have used it instead for his shield.

Re:Diamonds =/= Diamonds?

[Deitheres]

I guess a pretty simple way to put it would be like this:

butter and ice cream are both essentially different forms of milk, but you don't see people walking around with cones full of butter do you?

If you do, that's pretty gross.

LIES! NO GOATSE LINK!

[Anonymous Coward]

The link goes to a legitimate source. Not a goatse link. Fucking trolls.

Re:To all the posters making jokes about thier wiv

[el_womble]

Please choose an answer from the following:

1. You love, honour and respect her, she just has a thing for diamonds, like you do for G5s
2. Shes f"!king gorgeous
3. She was the only one that said yes
4. She can keep you in the level of technology that you have become accustomed

Re:To all the posters making jokes about thier wiv

[Anonymous Coward]

> Why'd you marry such shallow, pathetic women?

What -- you mean there's some other kind?

I think the AC was suggesting that people should broaden their horizons.

Re:Discovery? No way.

[Arren]

.....

Wow, I didn't know Comic Book Guy lurked on Slashdot.....

Re:Stability?

[william_w_bush]

Perhaps "A Sphere of Solid Neutronium greater than it's Schwartzchild radius without the effects of gravitational tides and/or variances in the background energy state of the universe in relation to Gauge symmetries is forever"?

But actually, nobody would remember that, cause it's stupid.

One Use

[CleverNickedName]

Finally, I'll be able to drill into that 10ft diamond I found in the garden.

I'm sure there's gold in the center of it!

Re:To all the posters making jokes about thier wiv

[proton]

two words: big boobs

/pro

Re:To all the posters making jokes about thier wiv

[Anonymous Coward]

You must ahve an interesting definition of 'to win'.

Re:Stability?

[Jetekus]

Ah but all neutrons will eventually decay to protons (the only completely stable baryon), so it's really more accurate to say that protons are forever. Or maybe hydrogen atoms...

Re:Possible uses?

[swingkid]

I'm not googling for "ultrahard" anything at work

Re:What is it about carbon?

[freewaybear]

The most electronegative element is Flour, with a value of 3.98, while carbon only has a value of 2.55. I thought flour was made from seed grains! I must update my periodic table and cookbooks!

So on the Moh's scale of hardness...

[RealErmine]

This one goes to 11?

Re:Discovery? No way.

[FlopEJoe]

I don't know what to be more disturbed about. a. the fact that you knew which comic it was in or b. that I immediately had to figure out a Google to prove to check your facts! Superman's Powers

One word

[Anonymous Coward]

Ours go to eleven.

Re:One word

[p3d0]

That's four words, Mr. Quayle.

Re:Diamonds =/= Diamonds?

[Pollardito]

This artificial, human-created diamond-type substance that is made from diamond

that sounds an awful lot like "buttery flavored topping"

Terrible story...

[Anonymous Coward]

DIamond is no longer the strongest material known to man. The new winner.... diamond.
            Geez. I usually don't complain about the editors, but...

We already do that.

[Medievalist]

As a side question, who thinks that as all of the advanced carbon materials become readily available over the next 50 years, and demand increases, that we may have found our solution to global warming? We'll scrub CO2 from the atmosphere to build our carbon products!

We've been doing that for years. It's called "carpentry" and it uses these cool bio-tech machines called "trees" to convert atomospheric carbon and water into complex hydrocarbon structures known as "wood".

You have to have a source of trace minerals (typically through a "ground" or "earth" connection) but the majority of the created structures are built from atmospheric carbon and hydrogen from water. The created material is incredibly useful and can be formed with little effort using commonly available tools.

Oh, and the best part is, the process is entirely solar-powered. There's a little reverse carbon leakage when solar energy is not available (a condition we call "night") but it's negligible.

Sorry, I couldn't help myself.

TERRORIST!

[LPetrazickis]

A butter knife made entirely out of THAT!

You TERRORIST! Won't anyone please think of the children?

Re:TERRORIST!

[Anonymous Coward]

A butter knife made entirely out of THAT!

You TERRORIST! Won't anyone please think of the children?

Yes. About that. Which side of them is it best to put the butter on.