The team put graphite under an intense amount of pressure, before heating it to 1,800 K. The newly produced diamond has a hardness of 155 gigapascals (GPa). Natural diamond, by comparison, tops out at around 110 GPa in hardness.
Deep below the surface of our world, far beyond our feeble reach, enigmatic processes grind and roil.
While natural diamonds take billions of years to form, lab-grown diamonds can be produced quickly and at a fraction of the cost.
Simulations of an elusive carbon molecule that leaves diamonds in the dust for hardness may pave the way to creating it in a lab.
