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Harder Than Diamond? The New Hexagonal Diamond Breakthrough (EP 38)
Hosted by Lester Nare and Krishna Choudhary, this episode is a deep dive into one of the strangest and most hard-fought materials science stories in decades: the claim that researchers have finally synthesized bulk hexagonal diamond, also known as lonsdaleite. They break down why this material matters, how it differs from ordinary cubic diamond, why scientists argued about its existence for more than 50 years, and what the new Nature paper actually did to convince skeptical reviewers.
Summary
Why hexagonal diamond matters — if real, it is a long-sought carbon phase that could be slightly…
The skinny
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