Dimond

Hard stuff

Diamonds are very very hard, so hard that they rate a 10 out of 10 on Mohs scale of mineral hardness.

Now two rare natural substance have been discovered that are both harder than diamond.

The first, wurtzite boron nitride has a similar structure to diamond, but is made up of different atoms.

The second, the mineral lonsdaleite, or hexagonal diamond is made from carbon atoms just like diamond, but they are arranged in a different shape.

Only small amounts of wurtzite boron nitride and lonsdaleite exist naturally or have been made in the lab so until now no one had realised their superior strength. A simulation showed that wurtzide boron nitride could withstand 18% more stress than diamond, and lonsdaleite 58% more. If the results are confirmed with physical experiments, both materials would be far harder than any substance ever measured.