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Harder-Than-Diamond Natural Carbon Crystals Found
HikingStick tips a piece from the science desk at MSNBC.com about a new, naturally occurring form of carbon found in a meteorite fragment. "Researchers were polishing a slice of the carbon-rich Havero meteorite that fell to Earth in Finland in 1971. When they then studied the polished surface they discovered carbon-loaded spots that were raised well above the rest of the surface — suggesting that these areas were harder than the diamonds used in the polishing paste... [G]raphite layers were shocked and heated enough to create bonds between the layers — which is exactly how humans manufacture diamonds... [The research] team took the next step and put the diamond-resistant crystals under the scrutiny of some very rigorous mineralogical analyzing instruments to learn how its atoms are lined up. That allowed them to confirm that they had, indeed, found a new 'phase' or polymorph of crystalline carbon as well as a type of diamond that had been predicted to exist decades ago, but had never been found in nature until now."
The very end of the article suggests that they are harder than regular naturally occurring diamonds.
However, there is no way at the present to compare them to the artificial ultra-hard diamonds known as lonsdaleite and boron nitride, Ferroir said.
...do you think that the meteorite was made by magicians?
Space is natural too.
However, there is no way at the present to compare them to the artificial ultra-hard diamonds known as lonsdaleite and boron nitride, Ferroir said.
Boron nitride is not diamond at all, and lonsdaleite is described by Wikipedia as an allotrope of carbon that is found in meteorites and is harder than diamonds. Perhaps these people have just re-discovered something that was already known.
The article mentions hexagonal diamond (lonsdaleite) as an artificial form of diamond, which it is with a very interesting low energy formation method, but it was first found in nature in the Canyon Diablo Meteorite in 1967. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lonsdaleite Pure lonsdaleite should be harder than regular diamond. I wish the article has said a little more about the crystal structure the researchers had found. That the energy required to make lonsdalite is low has interesting implications since the quantity needed to replace structural steel needs only about 1/280 of the energy needed to make the steel. http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2008/01/anaximenes-way.html
They've got an odd definition of "diamond" there: boron nitride has no carbon in it. It's a chemical analogue of diamond, in that you turn half the C atoms (atomic number 6) into B (atomic number 5) and the others into N (atomic number 7). B-N compounds are fun analogues of C compounds but it's a bit of a stretch.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
One can also make diamonds harder by isolating and using heavier isotopes. A diamond of purified carbon-13 is harder than a mix of 12,13,14. Man-made diamonds can actually be harder than naturally occurring ones.
Fullerite is formed from fullerene or buckyballs and is about twice as hard as diamond: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fullerene#Fullerite_.28solid_state.29
But it wasn't a rock....it was a rock LOBSTER!!!