Molten carbon can form into either diamond or graphite. A new study shows how graphite can sometimes form even under conditions that should lead to diamond. (Getty Images) The graphite found in your ...

A Chinese research team has produced bulk hexagonal diamond, a crystal structure long theorized to be harder than ...

Diamonds are famous for their strength, but scientists have long suspected that another form of diamond might be even harder.

James is a published author with multiple pop-history and science books to his name. He specializes in history, space, strange science, and anything out of the ordinary.View full profile James is a ...

To synthesize the crystals, the team compressed highly ordered pyrolytic graphite to pressures as high as 20 gigapascals, ...

Atomic structure of the hexagonal diamond. Image from the study. Researchers named it lonsdaleite, after crystallographer ...

The graphite found in your favorite pencil could have instead been the diamond your mother always wears. What made the difference? Researchers are finding out. How molten carbon crystallizes into ...

A treasure trove of diamonds may be sown into Mercury’s cratered crust. Billions of years of meteorite impacts may have flash-baked much of Mercury’s surface into the glittery gemstones, planetary ...

The graphite found in your favorite pencil could have instead been the diamond your mother always wears. What made the difference? Researchers are finding out. How molten carbon crystallizes into ...

Molten carbon can crystallize into diamond or graphite, but it has been difficult to study this process. New simulations show that graphite can sometimes "hijack" the pathway that would lead to ...