New Substance Is Harder Than Diamond, Scientists Say

originally posted by: yuppa

originally posted by: rickymouse
Well, with the properties it has, I feel they will weaponize this new crystal.

Rail gun projectiles since its magnetic and conductive. Shoot even the rails could b e made of it.

That is what I was thinking of, a laser cannon or rail gun.

a reply to: Tardacus

Great! Can you say bullets that penetrate state-of-the-art shielding with no explosion? Q-carbon sounds like the material of the future. Tech-geeks will have a heyday with it.

" Mithril, light as a feather, hard as Dragon scales."- Bilbo Baggins

a reply to: SurfinUSA

or, maybe they can make flexible, thin body armor with it?

Diamond might be hard but it is brittle. Perhaps not so good as armour.

a reply to: ObsidianEclipse
yeah, I don`t know how brittle this Q-carbon is they didn`t say, that`s a good point I never thought about.
maybe they could use it as thin lining behind some Kevlar?

I seem to remember reading myths about atlantis where they mentioned fluorescent crystals that could shoot out "sparks' that`s why this article really caught my attention.
I was like "WHAT?" didn`t I already read about this stuff in a story about "mythical" atlantis?

Thermal shock is another problem with diamond. It can shatter under rapid changes in temperature.

It does sound like quite an interesting material and the process seems quite simple and cheap. Synthetic diamond dust isn't particularly expensive, we already use it on drill bits and saws but it's hardness is less than naturally occurring diamond. It could open up possibilities for all sorts of new technologies, particularly the electro conducting and magnetic properties. I'd hazard a guess it play a role in developing future computer processors.

a reply to: Tardacus

A great many things are conceivable with Q-carbon. The only issue is making the creation process cheaper and faster.

Neat. So if you use a laser to achieve something resembling a martensitic transformation to graphite or carbon buckyballs, you can get a diamond-like material? I wonder if you can repeat the process and bind bigger and bigger grains together? Imagine if instead of a bunch of granules, you could form solid structures of the stuff.

I wonder if a similar process could work with aluminum oxide? (Sythetic sapphire is a neat technology, same stuff as in sandpaper. But imagine if it was made even easier to make than the current method.)

Looks like the trick with the laser is the rapid heating to a ridiculous temperature, but since it's so focused it looses the heat just as fast. It's like annealing very close to the molecular level. Cool stuff!

originally posted by: ISawItFirst
a reply to: randomthoughts12

No. Diamonds are cheap. Very common...

www.gemsociety.org...
...

From the link:

In the constellation Centaurus, there lies a white dwarf, that has crystallized into a diamond 2,500 miles in diameter and weighing 10 billion, trillion, trillion carats.

I didn't know a white dwarf can cool down like this. Glad to see your link.. thanks.

There we go, guy says it all with a cybermouth: