When everyone talks about the hardest material in the World, Only one thing comes to people's mind that is Diamond. Apart from wedding rings and other jewelry, diamond has so many applications. This naturally hardest thing can cut through metals and any other objects.

Over a couple of years, scientists are trying to make this hardest thing harder. A group of Scientists from Australian National University(ANU) led by Prof. Jodie Bradby has created a rare type of diamond which is predicted to be tougher than the regular Diamond.

This upgraded version of the diamond is known as Lonsdaleite. Scientists first came to know about its existence in 1967. According to the report of Tech Times it was found inside the core of a meteorite at Canyon Diablo meteorite site, United States. That sample was taken at the lab but it wasn't so successful.

Prof. Jodie Bradby said in a press release,"There is a natural way to create [this kind of] diamond, which is harder than diamond diamond, and that is through meteorite impact."

It takes about 1000 Degree celsius (1832° F) to form a diamond but Prof. Bradby and her team took a different path to achive this. She took a sample of amorphous carbon and sandwiched it between the two piece of Diamond anvil. With an incredible pressure & 400-degree celsius, she was finally able to form a nanocrystal of Lonsdaleite.

According to the research data, this newly discovered diamond has a different carbon structure than the regular Diamond. While regular diamond contains cubic structure, then Lonsdaleite has a hexagonal structure which makes it smaller and stronger than its predecessor. These reports were first published in Nature article.

Lansdaleite is named after tha honor of famous Crystallographer Dame Kathleen Lonsdale, first woman British pioneer elected as a fellow of Royal Society. Although, this new avatar of diamond is not going to be used in wedding rings, but it can be used in mining sites to cut stubbornly hard materials. Scientists are also planning to create long term 3d data storage and nano-sized microdisks with diamond, which might lead to success in advanced Quantum Computing.

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