1 00:00:00,040 --> 00:00:04,360 So imagine you've spent about 50 years arguing as a scientific 2 00:00:04,360 --> 00:00:08,520 community about whether a legendary material exists, and 3 00:00:08,520 --> 00:00:11,800 then finally someone has made it and they're holding it in their 4 00:00:11,800 --> 00:00:13,480 hands. We're talking about a material 5 00:00:13,480 --> 00:00:18,160 that in theory is harder than the hardest known material, 6 00:00:18,160 --> 00:00:20,840 which is conventional diamond. This, this, this is like, this 7 00:00:20,840 --> 00:00:23,080 is some beef, dude. Yeah, this is what beef looks 8 00:00:23,080 --> 00:00:23,680 like. Yeah. 9 00:00:23,920 --> 00:00:25,960 Like in the. Or something right? 10 00:00:26,480 --> 00:00:29,360 Hello Internet, this is your captain speaking, Lester Nare, 11 00:00:29,360 --> 00:00:34,080 joined as always by my Co host and our resident PhD Krishna 12 00:00:34,080 --> 00:00:36,800 Chowdhury. Today we're going to be diving 13 00:00:36,800 --> 00:00:42,000 into a paper that is actually a follow up to our episode 5 story 14 00:00:42,240 --> 00:00:45,680 on unbreakable hexagonal diamonds. 15 00:00:45,680 --> 00:00:50,520 This paper was published in Nature on March 4th of 2026 from 16 00:00:50,520 --> 00:00:54,440 three Chinese teams from Zhangzhou, Nanjing and Henan 17 00:00:54,440 --> 00:00:57,320 universities. As always, we're going to learn 18 00:00:57,320 --> 00:01:00,120 about the science from the ground up today on this follow 19 00:01:00,120 --> 00:01:03,960 up episode, because this is from First Principles. 20 00:01:19,720 --> 00:01:24,080 So imagine you've spent about 50 years arguing as a scientific 21 00:01:24,080 --> 00:01:28,240 community about whether a legendary material exists, and 22 00:01:28,240 --> 00:01:31,520 then finally someone has made it and they're holding it in their 23 00:01:31,520 --> 00:01:33,480 hand and you can see it with the naked eye. 24 00:01:33,640 --> 00:01:36,920 And that's roughly the situation when it comes to hexagonal 25 00:01:36,920 --> 00:01:40,240 diamond or lawns delight. It's a form of carbon that was 26 00:01:40,240 --> 00:01:45,200 first proposed in the 1960s, and material scientists have been 27 00:01:45,240 --> 00:01:49,560 seeking this Holy Grail ever since, OK? 28 00:01:49,760 --> 00:01:52,160 There's been debate about whether it even exists in the 29 00:01:52,160 --> 00:01:55,400 1st place. OK, there's a new paper that's 30 00:01:55,400 --> 00:01:57,680 saying that they've actually made it, and the stakes are 31 00:01:57,680 --> 00:02:00,560 quite enormous because we're talking about a material that in 32 00:02:00,560 --> 00:02:04,800 theory is harder than the hardest known material, which is 33 00:02:04,800 --> 00:02:08,280 conventional diamond. This is an upgrade on diamonds 34 00:02:08,680 --> 00:02:11,240 that we normally have on our ring finger and things like 35 00:02:11,240 --> 00:02:13,200 that. The current benchmark for the 36 00:02:13,200 --> 00:02:16,680 hardest material is a conventional diamond, and here 37 00:02:16,680 --> 00:02:20,160 we've gone a step further. So it's a very big deal because 38 00:02:20,280 --> 00:02:24,560 in industry diamonds are applied all over the place, OK. 39 00:02:24,560 --> 00:02:28,360 It's not just used as jewelry. In fact, the the reason why a 40 00:02:28,360 --> 00:02:32,360 diamond is so expensive is because the Jewelers are 41 00:02:32,360 --> 00:02:36,240 artificially crunching the supply while the demand is 42 00:02:36,240 --> 00:02:39,600 really high because of all of Hollywood and pop culture and 43 00:02:39,600 --> 00:02:44,520 things like that. But diamond in its core is 44 00:02:44,560 --> 00:02:47,600 really effective in all sorts of industry. 45 00:02:47,600 --> 00:02:51,520 For example, diamond diamond tipped drill bits. 46 00:02:52,000 --> 00:02:55,240 They can board through rock for any type of stuff. 47 00:02:55,280 --> 00:02:58,640 Oil exploration, mining, anything diamond coated cutting 48 00:02:58,640 --> 00:03:01,280 tools. They can machine aerospace grade 49 00:03:01,280 --> 00:03:03,720 titanium. Titanium is a hard metal but if 50 00:03:03,720 --> 00:03:06,800 you've got a diamond coated saw you can cut through titanium. 51 00:03:07,040 --> 00:03:09,360 Diamond windows. They protect infrared sensors 52 00:03:09,360 --> 00:03:12,280 and military systems. And the other cool one that I 53 00:03:12,480 --> 00:03:14,920 hadn't really thought about was diamond heat sinks. 54 00:03:15,400 --> 00:03:16,400 So. Interesting. 55 00:03:16,920 --> 00:03:19,920 Diamond is a really good insulator and it's also a really 56 00:03:19,920 --> 00:03:23,720 good heat sink in the in the in the means that like it can 57 00:03:23,720 --> 00:03:26,800 extract heat out of its environment and dump it to 58 00:03:26,800 --> 00:03:29,360 something else. And those are being explored for 59 00:03:29,360 --> 00:03:33,320 next generation computer chips because silicon is sort of 60 00:03:33,640 --> 00:03:36,720 meeting its thermal limit when it comes to heat dissipation. 61 00:03:36,920 --> 00:03:40,440 This is why everyone is saying that, you know, the data centers 62 00:03:40,440 --> 00:03:44,520 up in space won't work is because silicon is really bad at 63 00:03:45,000 --> 00:03:48,120 dissipating heat, right? We have to have giant cooling 64 00:03:48,120 --> 00:03:50,240 systems in order to do that. Well, if you have a chip that 65 00:03:50,240 --> 00:03:53,600 has integrated silicon and diamond to manage that heat 66 00:03:53,600 --> 00:03:57,960 dissipation, you could now push even further right on how big 67 00:03:57,960 --> 00:04:00,280 you can make a server rack and things like that. 68 00:04:00,480 --> 00:04:02,920 And so we desperately need these types of materials. 69 00:04:03,200 --> 00:04:05,920 Diamond is one of these things. And imagine now you can make an 70 00:04:05,920 --> 00:04:08,880 upgraded diamond that's going to upgrade all of these in in 71 00:04:09,200 --> 00:04:12,920 industrial applications, right? And the other reason why this 72 00:04:12,920 --> 00:04:17,120 matters, this particular story, is because for the longest time, 73 00:04:17,760 --> 00:04:21,320 computational simulations, meaning I take the material, I 74 00:04:21,320 --> 00:04:23,840 take all of the atoms in the arrangements of that material. 75 00:04:24,200 --> 00:04:28,200 I put that into a computer, and I asked the computer to just 76 00:04:28,200 --> 00:04:31,720 churn Schrodinger's equations. And the what we know about 77 00:04:31,720 --> 00:04:36,240 physics and material physics, if we do that in computer 78 00:04:36,240 --> 00:04:40,120 simulation, those simulations suggest that this thing is real. 79 00:04:41,440 --> 00:04:44,400 But for the longest time we don't have any material samples 80 00:04:44,640 --> 00:04:48,200 to analyze. And so there's a fundamental 81 00:04:48,200 --> 00:04:52,120 problem now, because our physics of what a material should look 82 00:04:52,120 --> 00:04:55,160 like is saying one thing and we've never been able to do it. 83 00:04:55,480 --> 00:04:58,880 So it's almost like a bedrock foundational problem for the 84 00:04:58,880 --> 00:05:01,800 field, right? That theoretically this thing 85 00:05:01,800 --> 00:05:04,120 should be possible. Why is it so hard? 86 00:05:04,120 --> 00:05:07,440 And is it even possible, right? Because if if it's if it's truly 87 00:05:07,440 --> 00:05:10,840 not, then we have to go back to the drawing board on fundamental 88 00:05:10,840 --> 00:05:13,520 material science. And that is some a very 89 00:05:13,520 --> 00:05:17,040 uncomfortable scenario, right for everyone in the field. 90 00:05:17,080 --> 00:05:18,400 Right, right. Yes. 91 00:05:18,440 --> 00:05:21,080 And so the status now is we've got a team in China that 92 00:05:21,080 --> 00:05:26,320 synthesized millimeter sized pure hexagonal diamond and it's 93 00:05:26,320 --> 00:05:29,320 resolving this 50 year academic debate. 94 00:05:29,560 --> 00:05:31,920 This happened earlier as well in 2005. 95 00:05:32,000 --> 00:05:36,760 As you alluded to, we covered a story in. 25/20/2025. 96 00:05:36,760 --> 00:05:39,880 Yeah, 2025, sorry. We covered a story last year 97 00:05:40,040 --> 00:05:42,760 that purportedly made hexagonal diamond. 98 00:05:42,960 --> 00:05:45,680 This is another research team in China that is doing the same 99 00:05:45,680 --> 00:05:48,640 thing, maybe a bit better, and we'll get into some of the drama 100 00:05:48,640 --> 00:05:51,000 there because there's a lot of drama and it's quite hilarious. 101 00:05:51,000 --> 00:05:56,120 We got the tea, everybody. OK, so let's start from the 102 00:05:56,120 --> 00:05:58,320 basics. Yes, carbon. 103 00:05:59,480 --> 00:06:02,040 Carbon is the 6th element on the periodic table. 104 00:06:02,040 --> 00:06:07,120 It has 6 protons in its nucleus, usually 6 elect, 6 neutrons, 105 00:06:07,400 --> 00:06:10,320 usually 6 neutrons in its nucleus, sometimes 7, sometimes 106 00:06:10,320 --> 00:06:12,880 8. But six protons in the nucleus 107 00:06:12,880 --> 00:06:16,680 mean you've got 6 electrons revolving around the atom. 2 are 108 00:06:16,680 --> 00:06:19,520 in the inner shell, but that means there's four that are left 109 00:06:19,520 --> 00:06:21,920 for that outer shell. And if there's four that are 110 00:06:21,920 --> 00:06:24,400 left for the outer shell, that means there's four holes. 111 00:06:24,760 --> 00:06:28,400 There's four valence positions where other electrons can come 112 00:06:28,400 --> 00:06:31,640 in. That is the maximum because the 113 00:06:31,640 --> 00:06:34,120 total number that you can have in that outer shell on that 114 00:06:34,120 --> 00:06:38,080 second ring is 8. So if you have three, that means 115 00:06:38,080 --> 00:06:43,200 you can have like 5 holes, but with four you can either give 116 00:06:43,200 --> 00:06:44,840 four or you can take 4. You can. 117 00:06:44,840 --> 00:06:47,920 So you can make the most bonds that way, right? 118 00:06:47,920 --> 00:06:51,800 Oxygen can only really make 2 bonds, the other ones can only 119 00:06:51,800 --> 00:06:53,640 make, you know, whatever is less. 120 00:06:53,840 --> 00:06:56,560 But 4 is right in the middle where I can give four or I can 121 00:06:56,560 --> 00:06:58,720 take 4 so I can make the most number of bonds. 122 00:06:58,720 --> 00:07:01,880 That's why it's so important in organic chemistry for life in 123 00:07:01,880 --> 00:07:05,200 general. The big thing is carbon is able 124 00:07:05,200 --> 00:07:08,720 to make bonds with itself, and sometimes it makes these things 125 00:07:08,720 --> 00:07:11,520 called allotropes. This is pure carbon. 126 00:07:11,680 --> 00:07:15,040 There is nothing other than carbon in these substances. 127 00:07:15,360 --> 00:07:17,720 For the longest time we thought there were only two graphite, 128 00:07:17,720 --> 00:07:21,840 which is the pencil lead. That's pure carbon, nothing 129 00:07:21,840 --> 00:07:24,040 else. And then there is obviously 130 00:07:24,040 --> 00:07:28,720 diamond, again pure carbon. Now, how do we know what the 131 00:07:28,720 --> 00:07:32,640 structure of the carbon in these materials is? 132 00:07:34,040 --> 00:07:37,640 Well, usually what we do is we do something called X-ray 133 00:07:37,640 --> 00:07:41,760 crystallography. This was a technique pioneered 134 00:07:41,760 --> 00:07:45,840 by William Henry Bragg and his son William Lawrence Bragg. 135 00:07:46,080 --> 00:07:50,080 We covered some of the drama there, the fact that William 136 00:07:50,080 --> 00:07:54,520 Lawrence Bragg, the son, did all of the math and did all of the 137 00:07:54,520 --> 00:07:57,480 actual groundwork. But William Henry Bragg, his 138 00:07:57,480 --> 00:08:02,560 father, published a paper about the technique and did not put 139 00:08:02,560 --> 00:08:05,200 his son's name on it. And that was a sticking point 140 00:08:05,200 --> 00:08:08,440 for his son Lawrence, who always wanted to be called by his 141 00:08:08,440 --> 00:08:10,680 middle name because that distinguished him from his 142 00:08:10,680 --> 00:08:13,120 father. William Lawrence Bragg and Henry 143 00:08:13,120 --> 00:08:16,360 Bragg, they both won the Nobel Prize in 1915, the only father, 144 00:08:16,360 --> 00:08:18,800 son duo to win the same Nobel Prize. 145 00:08:19,360 --> 00:08:22,280 And he was 25 at the time, the youngest Nobel Prize winner in 146 00:08:22,280 --> 00:08:25,440 the sciences. He went on to be the head of 147 00:08:25,440 --> 00:08:29,560 Cavendish Lab at Cambridge and managed the empire that was 148 00:08:29,560 --> 00:08:31,840 Cavendish Lab at Cambridge University. 149 00:08:31,840 --> 00:08:34,840 The idea is the following. You shoot X-rays out of crystal. 150 00:08:36,360 --> 00:08:39,559 The crystal is going to have a lattice structure, meaning all 151 00:08:39,559 --> 00:08:43,200 of the atoms are going to be arranged in a very nice regular 152 00:08:43,200 --> 00:08:45,160 fashion. Like we'll, we'll see some of 153 00:08:45,160 --> 00:08:47,120 the fashions that they're arranged, but in any case, it's 154 00:08:47,120 --> 00:08:49,080 like Lego blocks that are repetitive. 155 00:08:49,360 --> 00:08:51,720 And because they're repetitive, the X-rays are going to 156 00:08:51,760 --> 00:08:55,600 interfere at certain angles. And if I have a detector on the 157 00:08:55,600 --> 00:08:59,640 end, I can find spots where the X-ray is added up and other 158 00:08:59,640 --> 00:09:01,240 spots where the X-ray is canceled out. 159 00:09:01,440 --> 00:09:05,240 And using that pattern I can discern what is the structure of 160 00:09:05,240 --> 00:09:08,640 the crystal inside. OK, that's the whole game with 161 00:09:08,640 --> 00:09:11,760 X-ray crystallography. As a crude analogy is it's 162 00:09:11,760 --> 00:09:16,240 almost like making hand puppets with a light source on a wall 163 00:09:16,320 --> 00:09:19,160 and and you're looking at the shadow to determine what is the 164 00:09:19,400 --> 00:09:22,760 actual exactly figure. Yeah, that's basically it. 165 00:09:22,760 --> 00:09:25,800 But in like all three dimensions with like frequency and 166 00:09:25,800 --> 00:09:27,880 everything. Extremely more. 167 00:09:27,920 --> 00:09:29,280 Much more complex. Yeah. 168 00:09:29,320 --> 00:09:31,640 But at the end of the day, what you can do is through that, you 169 00:09:31,640 --> 00:09:35,520 can figure out what is the cubic, what is the structure of 170 00:09:35,520 --> 00:09:37,640 that crystal inside. And when we do this with 171 00:09:37,640 --> 00:09:40,040 diamond, we figure out that it's a cubic structure. 172 00:09:40,360 --> 00:09:43,560 This is what diamond looks like at the atomic scale. 173 00:09:43,960 --> 00:09:47,600 Each of these blue orbs is a carbon atom, and each carbon 174 00:09:47,600 --> 00:09:52,480 atom is attached to four other carbon atoms in this tetrahedral 175 00:09:52,480 --> 00:09:56,800 structure. That orange tetrahedron that is 176 00:09:57,160 --> 00:09:59,720 triangles on triangles, there's four triangles that are 177 00:09:59,720 --> 00:10:02,520 connected together. It's the first Platonic solid 178 00:10:02,520 --> 00:10:08,160 that is on our logo right here, and it's a beautiful structure. 179 00:10:08,600 --> 00:10:11,800 The reason why it's called a cubic diamond is notice that the 180 00:10:11,800 --> 00:10:16,440 repetitive fundamental unit of the crystal is in the shape of a 181 00:10:16,440 --> 00:10:19,400 cube, right? If you imagine you can take that 182 00:10:19,400 --> 00:10:22,440 same cube, put one right next to it, put one right next to it and 183 00:10:22,440 --> 00:10:24,480 stack and you get bigger and bigger. 184 00:10:24,680 --> 00:10:28,440 And a diamond is going to have, you know, 10 to the 20 of these 185 00:10:28,440 --> 00:10:30,080 carbon atoms or something like that. 186 00:10:30,080 --> 00:10:33,720 An enormous amount, but at the fundamental scale, that is what 187 00:10:33,720 --> 00:10:36,560 the diamond looks like. The reason why it's so hard is 188 00:10:36,560 --> 00:10:41,120 each of those bonds are highly tight covalent bonds where the 189 00:10:41,120 --> 00:10:44,240 carbon atoms are sharing an electron with the neighboring 190 00:10:44,240 --> 00:10:46,520 carbon atom. Remember I said carbons can do 4 191 00:10:46,520 --> 00:10:48,920 bonds. All four bonds are other carbon 192 00:10:48,920 --> 00:10:52,240 atoms. This thing is extremely tightly 193 00:10:52,240 --> 00:10:53,800 packed. OK. 194 00:10:54,600 --> 00:10:56,240 And it's single bonds that are going in. 195 00:10:56,360 --> 00:10:59,120 Yes. OK, So that's the fundamental 196 00:10:59,120 --> 00:11:01,240 unit of stacking. It's a cube. 197 00:11:01,480 --> 00:11:06,240 Hence normal diamond is called a cubic diamond right now. 198 00:11:06,240 --> 00:11:11,440 In 1962, researchers predicted that there would be a possible 199 00:11:11,440 --> 00:11:14,320 hexagonal polymorph of the diamond. 200 00:11:14,680 --> 00:11:17,400 They went through the, this is, you know, 1960. 201 00:11:17,400 --> 00:11:20,200 So this is before computers and stuff, But you can literally 202 00:11:20,200 --> 00:11:24,640 sort of do the mathematics of Schrodinger's equation around a 203 00:11:24,640 --> 00:11:27,720 carbon atom. And you can make the argument 204 00:11:27,960 --> 00:11:31,120 that instead of this cubic structure, there could be a kind 205 00:11:31,120 --> 00:11:36,400 of hexagonal structure that is even more stable and even more 206 00:11:36,400 --> 00:11:39,840 hard. OK, the question is, is that 207 00:11:39,840 --> 00:11:40,720 real? Right. 208 00:11:41,000 --> 00:11:43,840 So 1962 they published this paper in Nature. 209 00:11:44,360 --> 00:11:50,360 And in the 1967 they came up with the Canyon Diablo 210 00:11:50,360 --> 00:11:51,840 meteorite. There were people who were 211 00:11:54,000 --> 00:11:57,400 analyzing A meteorite that fell in Arizona 50,000 years ago. 212 00:11:57,400 --> 00:12:00,080 If you've ever, ever been to the Grand Canyon, the South side, 213 00:12:00,320 --> 00:12:03,920 there is Meteor Crater right next to the Grand Canyon sort of 214 00:12:03,920 --> 00:12:06,880 exit on the 40 freeway. I was there when I was very 215 00:12:06,880 --> 00:12:08,920 young. It was one of the first sort of 216 00:12:08,920 --> 00:12:12,360 science field trips that my family took and I got to see the 217 00:12:12,360 --> 00:12:16,320 Meteor Crater in Arizona. It is an awesome, awesome place. 218 00:12:16,720 --> 00:12:20,960 50 meters is about the size of the meteorite that hit Arizona, 219 00:12:21,120 --> 00:12:24,800 and it has a bunch of shards that fell all over Arizona and 220 00:12:24,800 --> 00:12:26,560 that they've been recovered. OK. 221 00:12:27,040 --> 00:12:34,320 Now this meteor hit Arizona extremely fast and meteors are 222 00:12:34,320 --> 00:12:36,920 made a lot of out of carbon. There's a lot of carbon in 223 00:12:36,920 --> 00:12:39,720 meteors. When they hit the Earth at this 224 00:12:39,720 --> 00:12:42,320 incredible velocity with incredible pressure, there's 225 00:12:42,320 --> 00:12:45,480 incredible heat. Perhaps the carbon is going to 226 00:12:45,480 --> 00:12:53,680 form a weird allotrope. And so in 1967, a paper came out 227 00:12:53,880 --> 00:12:59,800 again in Nature Lawns Delight, a hexagonal polymorph of diamond. 228 00:13:00,040 --> 00:13:03,400 They're saying that they found that hexagonal polymorph that 229 00:13:03,400 --> 00:13:07,360 was suggested in theory five years ago, right? 230 00:13:07,640 --> 00:13:11,240 They named it Lawns Delight. And just a brief sort of 231 00:13:13,000 --> 00:13:16,560 digression into why Lonsdaleite, it's named after Dame Kathleen 232 00:13:16,560 --> 00:13:20,080 Lonsdale. She was a foundational X-ray 233 00:13:20,080 --> 00:13:23,280 crystallographer and Prison Reform advocate. 234 00:13:24,840 --> 00:13:28,200 Very, very cool person, OK? She pioneered the use of X-ray 235 00:13:28,200 --> 00:13:30,360 crystallography. She actually did her PhD under 236 00:13:30,360 --> 00:13:33,000 William Henry Bragg, the dad, OK. 237 00:13:33,440 --> 00:13:37,760 And she wanted to understand the structure of aromatic compounds. 238 00:13:38,040 --> 00:13:42,400 Specifically, she figured out that benzene, which is A6 carbon 239 00:13:42,400 --> 00:13:46,760 ring with six hydrogens, that thing is a flat ring. 240 00:13:47,160 --> 00:13:49,120 She figured out that the structure of that thing was 241 00:13:49,120 --> 00:13:50,480 flat. She's one of the first to 242 00:13:50,480 --> 00:13:53,880 actually use something called Fourier transforms, which is 243 00:13:54,360 --> 00:13:56,800 where you go from frequency space to position space. 244 00:13:57,760 --> 00:14:00,600 The real mathematics behind X-ray crystallography. 245 00:14:00,600 --> 00:14:03,760 She's the one first one to figure out how to quantitatively 246 00:14:03,760 --> 00:14:07,520 use the mathematical theory to understand even more complicated 247 00:14:07,520 --> 00:14:09,920 patterns with extra crystallography. 248 00:14:09,960 --> 00:14:12,080 Okay. And so she laid the foundations 249 00:14:12,080 --> 00:14:14,760 of, for example, later on when extra crystallography was being 250 00:14:14,760 --> 00:14:18,680 used for proteins and other kinds of really weird amorphous 251 00:14:18,680 --> 00:14:22,960 solids or DNA, the famous DNA picture that Rosalynn Franklin 252 00:14:22,960 --> 00:14:26,520 took of the extra crystallography with the X, Her 253 00:14:26,520 --> 00:14:29,800 theories are what laid the foundation for that kind of work 254 00:14:29,800 --> 00:14:33,040 to be like, what is the kind of molecule that would give me an 255 00:14:33,040 --> 00:14:33,960 X? Yep. 256 00:14:34,120 --> 00:14:36,840 And Francis Crick was the one who figured out, OK, it's got to 257 00:14:36,840 --> 00:14:38,080 be a spiral, right? Right. 258 00:14:38,080 --> 00:14:41,680 And the, the spacing of the DNA of the, the spacing of the dots 259 00:14:41,680 --> 00:14:45,880 on that photo tell you how far away nucleotides are in DNA and 260 00:14:45,880 --> 00:14:48,680 how far away the turn is on a Helix and things like that. 261 00:14:48,840 --> 00:14:52,240 So incredible individual. She's one of the 1st 2:00 first 262 00:14:52,240 --> 00:14:54,800 two women elected to the Royal Society. 263 00:14:55,400 --> 00:14:58,960 She was also a Quaker, which is like, you know, it's the 264 00:14:58,960 --> 00:15:02,720 religion that Benjamin Franklin is famous for in Pennsylvania 265 00:15:02,720 --> 00:15:05,800 and things like that. So she refused to register for 266 00:15:05,800 --> 00:15:08,920 civil defense duties during World War 2 because they're very 267 00:15:08,920 --> 00:15:13,440 non violent people, right? And she was in prison for a 268 00:15:13,440 --> 00:15:15,080 month. And her experience in that 269 00:15:15,080 --> 00:15:18,000 prison was like, she used that experience to become a 270 00:15:18,000 --> 00:15:20,240 passionate Prison Reform advocate, right? 271 00:15:20,640 --> 00:15:21,400 So. Yes. 272 00:15:21,760 --> 00:15:26,040 All over the place she was. Great scientific impact, great 273 00:15:26,040 --> 00:15:31,680 social impact, not only by being a pioneer as a woman at the time 274 00:15:32,040 --> 00:15:35,680 who were not allowed in these scientific spaces as a 275 00:15:35,680 --> 00:15:40,560 generalization, but also still being grounded to that the world 276 00:15:40,560 --> 00:15:44,080 is still a society and it's not just the work we do in a lab. 277 00:15:44,240 --> 00:15:46,480 Exactly. Yeah, so incredible woman. 278 00:15:47,440 --> 00:15:50,960 This paper that comes out of 1967 by Frondell and Marvin, 279 00:15:51,440 --> 00:15:54,480 they claimed to have found the hexagonal diamond. 280 00:15:54,480 --> 00:15:57,600 They named it after Dame Kathleen Lonsdale. 281 00:15:57,600 --> 00:16:00,360 They call it Lawns Delight. They did X-ray diffraction on 282 00:16:00,360 --> 00:16:03,600 this thing, and they showed that it has the same pattern as 283 00:16:03,600 --> 00:16:06,640 something called wurzite, which is a zinc sulfur mineral that 284 00:16:06,640 --> 00:16:09,360 has hexagonal symmetry. Here, what you're looking at is 285 00:16:09,360 --> 00:16:12,440 an animation of wurzite. Just imagine instead of the two 286 00:16:12,440 --> 00:16:15,360 different colors, which are zinc and sulfur, all of them are the 287 00:16:15,360 --> 00:16:18,320 same color because they're all carbon atoms. 288 00:16:18,560 --> 00:16:20,200 That's where all the carbon atoms would be. 289 00:16:20,560 --> 00:16:22,840 There's two things that are different about this compared to 290 00:16:22,840 --> 00:16:25,760 the cubic diamond. OK, yes, first thing obviously 291 00:16:25,760 --> 00:16:28,760 is look at the unit cell. It's a hexagonal prism. 292 00:16:28,760 --> 00:16:33,280 Yes, right. There's a hexagon face on the 293 00:16:33,400 --> 00:16:36,680 top and the bottom. And the other thing is you're 294 00:16:36,680 --> 00:16:40,480 actually packing the carbon atoms closer together because 295 00:16:40,480 --> 00:16:45,800 the tetrahedral, the tetrahedral surfaces are flat compared to in 296 00:16:45,800 --> 00:16:50,000 before they were sort of at an angle at that 104.5° angle. 297 00:16:50,000 --> 00:16:52,440 Here they're flat. You're packing more carbon 298 00:16:52,440 --> 00:16:55,560 atoms. The bond length in between these 299 00:16:55,560 --> 00:17:00,120 carbon atoms is smaller and so the hardness mechanism is 300 00:17:00,120 --> 00:17:07,400 because of the resistance to like any form of stress, right? 301 00:17:07,599 --> 00:17:10,920 This thing is going to be harder than cubic diamond. 302 00:17:11,119 --> 00:17:13,480 Yes, OK. And I have one just brief 303 00:17:13,480 --> 00:17:17,160 question on this visual, just because there's as a layman the 304 00:17:17,200 --> 00:17:20,640 other visual difference here. And I understand that we're 305 00:17:20,640 --> 00:17:22,839 looking at wart site in this example. 306 00:17:23,319 --> 00:17:27,040 And the key difference is there's sort of that bottom row, 307 00:17:27,640 --> 00:17:29,680 right? So you have the sort of all the 308 00:17:29,680 --> 00:17:32,680 tetrahedrals packed in the hexagonal prism at the top, 309 00:17:32,680 --> 00:17:33,720 Yeah. And then there's just like a 310 00:17:33,720 --> 00:17:36,640 bottom row of empty space that kind of closes it out. 311 00:17:36,720 --> 00:17:39,560 Yeah, well, that thing is just going to be repeating over and 312 00:17:39,560 --> 00:17:41,080 over. I think they're only showing. 313 00:17:41,080 --> 00:17:43,000 One segment. Yeah, exactly. 314 00:17:43,000 --> 00:17:45,360 But because it's a crystal, it's like going to just keep 315 00:17:45,360 --> 00:17:46,320 repeating. Makes sense? 316 00:17:46,320 --> 00:17:47,760 Just want to clarify. Yeah, no, that's a good 317 00:17:47,760 --> 00:17:50,640 question. Now, if we think about how this 318 00:17:50,640 --> 00:17:54,400 is different from cubic diamond, diamond at a grand scale, not 319 00:17:54,400 --> 00:17:58,720 just that, OK, the fundamental unit is hexagonal rather than 320 00:17:58,720 --> 00:18:00,320 cubic. Yes, that's the first thing. 321 00:18:00,520 --> 00:18:04,400 But now let's let's consider like packing a bunch of carbon 322 00:18:04,400 --> 00:18:09,640 atoms like spheres in a, in a enclosed space, OK, How do we do 323 00:18:09,640 --> 00:18:11,080 that? Well, there's two ways of doing 324 00:18:11,080 --> 00:18:14,160 it. On the left is your cubic 325 00:18:14,160 --> 00:18:15,320 diamond. OK. 326 00:18:15,680 --> 00:18:18,120 That's the the one that we had seen earlier where the 327 00:18:18,120 --> 00:18:22,280 tetrahedrals are in a cubic sort of repeating unit. 328 00:18:22,320 --> 00:18:27,520 Yes, when you do that, layers of carbon atoms repeat, but they 329 00:18:27,520 --> 00:18:34,160 repeat in a ABCABCABC kind of manner, meaning you're going to 330 00:18:34,160 --> 00:18:37,920 get one layer of carbon atoms. The B layer, which is on top is 331 00:18:37,920 --> 00:18:39,960 going to fit somewhere in the gaps of that. 332 00:18:40,360 --> 00:18:42,720 The C layer is going to fit somewhere on the gaps above 333 00:18:42,720 --> 00:18:44,800 that, but it's going to be slightly offset from the A 334 00:18:44,800 --> 00:18:46,880 layer. So I'm going to get 3 distinct 335 00:18:46,880 --> 00:18:48,520 layers and it'll repeat like that. 336 00:18:48,560 --> 00:18:51,240 Yep. OK with hexagonal diamond, just 337 00:18:51,240 --> 00:18:54,280 because the nature of the geometry, I only need 2 layers 338 00:18:54,280 --> 00:18:56,920 of stacking. It's going to be A, then B is 339 00:18:56,920 --> 00:18:59,640 going to fit exactly in the gaps. 340 00:18:59,800 --> 00:19:02,360 But because A is slightly different from the previous A, 341 00:19:03,560 --> 00:19:07,840 the next layer can just repeat the bottom layer. 342 00:19:07,880 --> 00:19:11,480 So my stacking is going to go A/B, A/B, A/B instead of 343 00:19:11,600 --> 00:19:14,160 ABCABCABC. Yes. 344 00:19:14,440 --> 00:19:17,080 And just for folks who may be listening, I just want to put a 345 00:19:17,080 --> 00:19:19,160 disclaimer. This is a slightly important 346 00:19:19,160 --> 00:19:22,360 episode for visual records points because it's it's very 347 00:19:22,360 --> 00:19:25,000 obvious visually. It's kind of hard to describe. 348 00:19:25,000 --> 00:19:28,680 It is just with audio or, or with voice. 349 00:19:29,040 --> 00:19:31,880 But I think sort of like what's interesting is you can kind of 350 00:19:31,880 --> 00:19:34,480 see the the offset you're talking about. 351 00:19:34,480 --> 00:19:38,880 Like imagine a staircase that has three stairs, one and then 352 00:19:38,880 --> 00:19:39,960 two. Like when you're looking at it 353 00:19:39,960 --> 00:19:40,840 from the side. Yeah. 354 00:19:41,040 --> 00:19:44,280 So you know, the cubic diamond is almost like 3 steps on the 355 00:19:44,280 --> 00:19:45,160 staircase. Yeah. 356 00:19:45,560 --> 00:19:49,200 Where the offset on the C is significantly farther away from 357 00:19:49,200 --> 00:19:51,200 the A Yeah. But in the hexagonal is just two 358 00:19:51,200 --> 00:19:53,440 steps. And so imagine you're creating 359 00:19:53,440 --> 00:19:55,560 like this staircase that's going back and forth. 360 00:19:55,560 --> 00:19:59,480 Yeah. Like this having 2 versus 3 you 361 00:19:59,480 --> 00:20:00,800 can already. Think you can already think? 362 00:20:00,840 --> 00:20:03,480 Yes. Structurally that it would be. 363 00:20:03,480 --> 00:20:04,960 It would be better, it would be harder. 364 00:20:05,120 --> 00:20:07,080 The things would be closer packed, right? 365 00:20:07,080 --> 00:20:09,560 The bonds would be a bit stronger, the layers would be a 366 00:20:09,560 --> 00:20:11,920 bit stronger, right? And just theoretically, you can 367 00:20:11,920 --> 00:20:15,560 just like kind of imagine that this hexagonal diamond is going 368 00:20:15,560 --> 00:20:18,000 to be harder and better than a cubic diamond, right? 369 00:20:18,120 --> 00:20:19,840 Right. Right, we will not be playing 370 00:20:19,840 --> 00:20:22,200 the Daft Punk song Harder Better Faster stronger. 371 00:20:22,200 --> 00:20:24,560 However, it would be a good theme for this episode. 372 00:20:24,560 --> 00:20:26,200 Yeah, yeah, yeah. We'll put it in the social 373 00:20:26,680 --> 00:20:29,360 right. So OK, discover in the 1960s, 374 00:20:29,640 --> 00:20:32,240 this is when they're like, okay, I think we found it right, yes. 375 00:20:32,440 --> 00:20:36,920 So in the 1960s, in parallel, it's kind of a golden age for 376 00:20:36,920 --> 00:20:41,600 high pressure physics because General Electric, GE, the 377 00:20:41,600 --> 00:20:45,280 company, they achieved the first reproducible synthesis of 378 00:20:45,280 --> 00:20:48,920 diamond from graphite, you know, lab diamonds, synthetic 379 00:20:48,920 --> 00:20:51,080 diamonds. They invented it in the 1960s. 380 00:20:51,080 --> 00:20:54,080 This is General Electric actually 1954. 381 00:20:54,440 --> 00:20:55,880 They use a kind of belt apparatus. 382 00:20:55,880 --> 00:20:58,800 It's it's effectively high pressure, high temperature. 383 00:20:58,840 --> 00:20:59,280 Yeah. OK. 384 00:20:59,400 --> 00:21:02,680 So you take graphite, you would subject it to 10 giga pascals, 385 00:21:02,920 --> 00:21:05,440 which is 100,000 times atmospheric pressure. 386 00:21:05,680 --> 00:21:10,320 You raise the temperature up to 1000° and you get diamond. 387 00:21:10,320 --> 00:21:12,400 This was a triumph in material science. 388 00:21:12,400 --> 00:21:16,240 Francis Bundy, Hall, Strong and Wentworth, they got enormous 389 00:21:16,240 --> 00:21:18,480 recognition. They they're in the Inventors 390 00:21:18,480 --> 00:21:21,120 Hall of Fame. Very controversially. 391 00:21:21,120 --> 00:21:24,920 No Nobel Prize for them. It might be because there's four 392 00:21:24,920 --> 00:21:28,360 people and the Nobel Prize can only go to three. 393 00:21:28,600 --> 00:21:31,360 But usually when that happens, you just wait for one of them to 394 00:21:31,360 --> 00:21:33,120 die, right? And then you give it to the 395 00:21:33,120 --> 00:21:35,320 other. 3. You know, but they didn't even 396 00:21:35,320 --> 00:21:38,280 do that, which I think is quite controversial because like lab 397 00:21:38,280 --> 00:21:41,840 grown diamonds are a game changer for all of these 398 00:21:41,840 --> 00:21:44,040 industrial applications that I was telling you about, right? 399 00:21:44,200 --> 00:21:47,560 So very much has changed the landscape of material science 400 00:21:47,560 --> 00:21:49,480 and industry. They probably should have gotten 401 00:21:49,480 --> 00:21:52,120 the Nobel Prize, but I think now all four of them have passed 402 00:21:52,120 --> 00:21:52,920 away. So it's too late. 403 00:21:53,040 --> 00:21:56,720 Understood. In any case, they've shown that 404 00:21:56,720 --> 00:21:59,880 we can make cubic diamond. And they this is also where we 405 00:21:59,880 --> 00:22:04,480 get the meme and the like colloquialism about strong as a 406 00:22:04,480 --> 00:22:07,400 diamond diamond under pressure. Like all of these various 407 00:22:08,400 --> 00:22:10,800 thingies, yes, is because the way you make diamonds is 408 00:22:10,840 --> 00:22:12,440 through. It's almost like, like almost 409 00:22:12,440 --> 00:22:14,200 most people kind of know. It's like heat. 410 00:22:14,320 --> 00:22:15,320 Yeah. And squeezing. 411 00:22:15,320 --> 00:22:16,120 Yeah. Diamond. 412 00:22:16,120 --> 00:22:18,520 Yeah, that's why it happens deep in the Earth's crust if it's 413 00:22:18,520 --> 00:22:20,440 natural. And here we're just trying to 414 00:22:20,440 --> 00:22:22,720 sort of replicate that natural mechanism, that's why. 415 00:22:22,720 --> 00:22:24,560 Yeah, exactly. Harder than a diamond. 416 00:22:24,760 --> 00:22:26,920 The diamond is forever stuff that's. 417 00:22:26,920 --> 00:22:27,880 Hollywood. That's Hollywood. 418 00:22:28,240 --> 00:22:29,600 That's. Hollywood and the Debeers 419 00:22:29,600 --> 00:22:32,760 Corporation. The as hard as a diamond. 420 00:22:32,760 --> 00:22:34,120 Diamond under pressure. That's physics. 421 00:22:34,200 --> 00:22:36,320 Right, right, right, right. Just to be clear. 422 00:22:36,360 --> 00:22:38,000 Yeah, just to. Be clear, there is a difference 423 00:22:38,000 --> 00:22:39,720 here in in how we approach things. 424 00:22:40,040 --> 00:22:44,440 So people start making lab grown diamonds and now we want to make 425 00:22:44,440 --> 00:22:46,240 lawns delight. We want to make hexagonal 426 00:22:46,240 --> 00:22:47,840 diamonds. We've made cubic diamonds. 427 00:22:48,240 --> 00:22:51,480 We still have not yet made the the thing we've already 428 00:22:51,480 --> 00:22:53,160 theoretically identified exactly. 429 00:22:53,160 --> 00:22:53,920 Possible. Yeah. 430 00:22:54,000 --> 00:22:55,720 Yeah. But there's a lot of problems. 431 00:22:56,000 --> 00:22:59,640 The samples are too small, the crystals are submicron in size, 432 00:22:59,800 --> 00:23:04,280 and there's no real definitive proof because you need a lot of 433 00:23:04,280 --> 00:23:06,760 a sample. And by a lot, I mean even like a 434 00:23:06,760 --> 00:23:10,080 millimeter worth of stuff to do anything, right? 435 00:23:10,360 --> 00:23:13,360 Right. So with all of this comes 436 00:23:13,360 --> 00:23:15,520 skepticism. It's like, well, why can't I 437 00:23:15,520 --> 00:23:18,240 just make right hexagonal diamond? 438 00:23:18,480 --> 00:23:21,560 How come every time I'm trying to make diamond, I always get 439 00:23:21,560 --> 00:23:23,720 cubic diamond, right? Which is the stuff that I see on 440 00:23:23,720 --> 00:23:25,320 Earth, right? And now you're telling me this, 441 00:23:25,320 --> 00:23:27,560 this meteor has it. But like, even the meteorite 442 00:23:27,560 --> 00:23:31,280 sample might not be that good. And that's where we come to 2014 443 00:23:31,520 --> 00:23:35,480 Nature Communications. There's a paper lawns of the 444 00:23:35,480 --> 00:23:39,600 light is faulted and twinned cubic diamond and does not exist 445 00:23:40,240 --> 00:23:43,640 as a discrete material. What a banger of a title. 446 00:23:44,120 --> 00:23:46,280 Okay, it's just like, no, this is fake. 447 00:23:47,080 --> 00:23:50,640 For those who might not understand, this is like def the 448 00:23:50,640 --> 00:23:52,880 definition of a clap back. Yes, yeah. 449 00:23:53,160 --> 00:23:57,240 Like to put in the title, does not exist as a discrete material 450 00:23:57,320 --> 00:24:00,480 when for like the past 40-50 years people have been like 451 00:24:00,480 --> 00:24:02,720 talking about how this is a thing, right? 452 00:24:03,040 --> 00:24:05,040 And so here is the argument that he's making. 453 00:24:05,280 --> 00:24:08,120 He's saying that lawns of light is just cubic diamond, but with 454 00:24:08,120 --> 00:24:09,720 something called stacking faults. 455 00:24:10,000 --> 00:24:14,000 What he's saying is if you look at the meteorite samples, OK, 456 00:24:15,000 --> 00:24:18,880 there's a bunch of cubic diamond lattice structure, but that 457 00:24:18,880 --> 00:24:21,280 cubic diamond lattice structure is not contiguous. 458 00:24:21,480 --> 00:24:24,200 There's like cubic diamond here, and then there's another domain 459 00:24:24,200 --> 00:24:27,920 of cubic diamond over here. And the boundary between them is 460 00:24:27,920 --> 00:24:28,960 slightly offset. Yeah. 461 00:24:29,360 --> 00:24:33,160 So when I put this through X-ray diffraction, I am going to get 462 00:24:33,160 --> 00:24:37,240 artifacts that suggest that there are spots where there is 463 00:24:37,240 --> 00:24:39,480 hexagonal diamond. And he goes through and does 464 00:24:39,480 --> 00:24:43,160 transmission electron microscopy of the sample of that meteorite, 465 00:24:43,160 --> 00:24:45,920 the Canon Diablo meteorite. And he's showing that there are 466 00:24:45,920 --> 00:24:47,960 these stacking faults. There are these boundaries, 467 00:24:47,960 --> 00:24:51,240 right? And so if you have enough 468 00:24:51,240 --> 00:24:54,560 stacking faults in your cubic diamond, the diffraction pattern 469 00:24:54,560 --> 00:24:57,720 is going to resemble the hexagonal stuff. 470 00:24:57,880 --> 00:25:00,320 And so you're not actually making hexagonal diamond, you're 471 00:25:00,320 --> 00:25:02,560 just making a bunch of cubic diamond with defects. 472 00:25:02,760 --> 00:25:05,560 And then when you put it through the X-ray diffraction O, it's 473 00:25:05,560 --> 00:25:06,880 hexagonal. You can't say that. 474 00:25:06,960 --> 00:25:10,000 So he called it Fugazi, Yeah. He's like, he's like, no, this 475 00:25:10,000 --> 00:25:11,480 is, this is nothing. This is nothing, right? 476 00:25:11,920 --> 00:25:15,440 But meanwhile, computational studies are refusing to give up. 477 00:25:15,680 --> 00:25:16,920 And this is what I was talking about, right? 478 00:25:16,920 --> 00:25:19,600 Like you go, you go through and you and you and you put it in 479 00:25:19,600 --> 00:25:22,240 the computer and the computer's saying this is fine. 480 00:25:22,520 --> 00:25:25,040 This is totally a possible allotrope of carbon. 481 00:25:25,280 --> 00:25:27,840 This works. The carbon atoms are all happy. 482 00:25:27,960 --> 00:25:31,080 They don't want to go into another phase like if you set 483 00:25:31,080 --> 00:25:32,960 them up like this, they'll stay like. 484 00:25:32,960 --> 00:25:36,800 This based on the rules of of just foundational and basic 485 00:25:36,800 --> 00:25:38,720 physics that we understand to be true. 486 00:25:39,200 --> 00:25:43,080 You can extrapolate in a computer and it it's fine. 487 00:25:43,080 --> 00:25:45,920 Yeah, it's fine. It only works so. 488 00:25:45,920 --> 00:25:47,200 So what? What gives? 489 00:25:47,240 --> 00:25:49,480 Which means the theory of the case here is that it is an 490 00:25:49,480 --> 00:25:53,120 engineering problem, not a fundamental physics or science 491 00:25:53,120 --> 00:25:55,040 problem. That's kind of the what's been 492 00:25:55,040 --> 00:25:57,640 the argument. It's been the argument and but 493 00:25:57,640 --> 00:26:00,000 in order to prove that, you got to just solve the engineering 494 00:26:00,000 --> 00:26:01,240 problem. Yeah, right. 495 00:26:01,440 --> 00:26:04,000 And that requires a lot of fundamental physics at the end 496 00:26:04,000 --> 00:26:06,560 of the day. And so in 2024, we were at this 497 00:26:06,560 --> 00:26:09,400 interesting state, right? The theory says lawns and legs 498 00:26:09,400 --> 00:26:14,080 should be real. The experiment says, Nah, this 499 00:26:14,080 --> 00:26:19,040 is where we get into this paper. Bulk, hexagonal diamond, great 500 00:26:19,520 --> 00:26:23,880 name, three word. I haven't seen a shorter Nature 501 00:26:23,880 --> 00:26:26,840 paper title to be honest. Well done. 502 00:26:26,920 --> 00:26:28,800 Right. Well, bulk hexagonal diamond. 503 00:26:28,800 --> 00:26:29,600 That's it. That's it. 504 00:26:29,880 --> 00:26:33,600 That's it. No nature, no narrating. 505 00:26:33,600 --> 00:26:36,640 Yeah, no, just. This is what we this is what it 506 00:26:36,640 --> 00:26:38,440 is. Right, it's quite nice. 507 00:26:38,440 --> 00:26:39,240 It's. Quite nice. 508 00:26:39,280 --> 00:26:42,680 It's a, it's a macroscopic pure sample that they've created. 509 00:26:43,040 --> 00:26:47,680 OK, they're showing that it's not an artifact, and let's get 510 00:26:47,680 --> 00:26:49,720 into how exactly they did it. Yes, all right. 511 00:26:49,960 --> 00:26:51,800 And before we do. Yes. 512 00:26:52,080 --> 00:26:53,760 I'm going to do some brief show notes. 513 00:26:53,760 --> 00:26:56,560 So if you are listening to this and you were a listener on 514 00:26:56,560 --> 00:27:00,360 episode 5 when we talked about the other group of Chinese teams 515 00:27:00,360 --> 00:27:03,600 that did the story, you're this is going to be very exciting 516 00:27:03,600 --> 00:27:07,120 because all of the stuff we do here, much like science and 517 00:27:07,120 --> 00:27:10,640 science research itself, builds on top of each other. 518 00:27:11,000 --> 00:27:15,720 The Nobel Prize aspect, all of these people, all these people 519 00:27:15,920 --> 00:27:19,600 and aspects that we really try to weave together is the joy 520 00:27:19,600 --> 00:27:23,440 that we get of doing the show. And you as the supporting 521 00:27:23,440 --> 00:27:26,520 community audience are a huge part of why we're able to do 522 00:27:26,520 --> 00:27:28,880 that. So a simple like, share, follow, 523 00:27:28,880 --> 00:27:33,240 comment, you would not believe how much comments change how 524 00:27:33,240 --> 00:27:35,200 much our video gets shown to other people. 525 00:27:35,560 --> 00:27:39,800 Let's talk more about science, experimental design, breaking 526 00:27:39,800 --> 00:27:43,120 science, research, and any way that you can engage in our 527 00:27:43,120 --> 00:27:46,800 content is super, super helpful for us getting this show to more 528 00:27:46,800 --> 00:27:48,840 people. If you would like to become a 529 00:27:48,920 --> 00:27:53,400 patron, you can go over to our website, fpspod.com. back slash, 530 00:27:53,400 --> 00:27:55,640 donate, make a one time donation. 531 00:27:55,960 --> 00:27:58,720 If you think this is better than Netflix, you can make a monthly 532 00:27:58,720 --> 00:28:01,440 recurring donation, but every little bit helps. 533 00:28:01,440 --> 00:28:05,080 It is the two of us here who both produce, write, distribute 534 00:28:05,520 --> 00:28:08,600 and run the entire show and we really like to make sure it's at 535 00:28:08,600 --> 00:28:12,480 a high level, high quality overlays, great breakdowns, and 536 00:28:12,480 --> 00:28:16,760 your support is the key aspect that allows us to do so. 537 00:28:17,200 --> 00:28:20,600 And with that, let's get back into the story. 538 00:28:20,920 --> 00:28:23,760 Yep, bulk hexagonal diamond. How did they do it? 539 00:28:23,760 --> 00:28:24,600 How? Did they do it the? 540 00:28:24,600 --> 00:28:26,680 Challenge. Is the following actually OK? 541 00:28:28,240 --> 00:28:31,360 You know, let's ask why is it so easy now? 542 00:28:31,400 --> 00:28:35,160 I mean, it's hard, but why is it so easy to create cubic diamond, 543 00:28:35,160 --> 00:28:38,640 normal diamond, but it's so hard to create hexagonal diamond, 544 00:28:38,920 --> 00:28:42,000 right? We're just pressing graphite, 545 00:28:42,760 --> 00:28:45,920 but every single time we're just getting the lab grown standard 546 00:28:45,920 --> 00:28:47,720 diamond. I want to create hexagonal 547 00:28:47,720 --> 00:28:50,320 diamond. The reason why is that standard 548 00:28:50,480 --> 00:28:54,120 high pressure, high temperature conditions favor the formation 549 00:28:54,120 --> 00:28:57,600 of cubic diamond because cubic diamond is actually a global 550 00:28:57,600 --> 00:28:59,960 energy minimum. You know, when we think about 551 00:28:59,960 --> 00:29:04,280 energy landscapes, we can think about orientations and how 552 00:29:04,400 --> 00:29:07,800 different orientations of the diamond have different energies, 553 00:29:07,840 --> 00:29:09,640 Yes. And it turns out the cubic 554 00:29:09,640 --> 00:29:13,800 diamond, even though it's sort of bigger and has that ABCABC 555 00:29:13,800 --> 00:29:17,840 stacking, yes, that has a lower energy and is more favorable 556 00:29:17,960 --> 00:29:21,440 than this ABAB smaller configuration. 557 00:29:21,440 --> 00:29:24,560 Very interesting. So it's you got to go through a 558 00:29:24,560 --> 00:29:29,080 very specific route in order to get to this local minima and 559 00:29:29,080 --> 00:29:31,480 avoid the global minimum. That makes sense. 560 00:29:31,480 --> 00:29:34,280 OK, that's what it turns out. And that has a lot to do with a 561 00:29:34,280 --> 00:29:37,240 lot of the computational work that was done around the 562 00:29:37,240 --> 00:29:39,640 hexagonal diamond to figure out why is this? 563 00:29:40,200 --> 00:29:42,520 Why is this not working? Other people have done that 564 00:29:42,520 --> 00:29:45,800 work. OK, so this team is like, all 565 00:29:45,800 --> 00:29:49,320 right, how are we going to make oppress? 566 00:29:49,320 --> 00:29:52,320 How are we going to make an experimental apparatus that is 567 00:29:52,320 --> 00:29:55,960 going to avoid that global minimum, not create a normal 568 00:29:56,000 --> 00:29:58,080 diamond and create our hexagonal diamond? 569 00:29:58,200 --> 00:30:02,160 Is it almost like saying we intentionally have to create an 570 00:30:02,160 --> 00:30:09,160 experimental apparatus that is not optimizing for the easy? 571 00:30:09,160 --> 00:30:10,680 Like the best? Yes, yeah, Yeah. 572 00:30:10,680 --> 00:30:12,000 Like we're in tennis. Yeah, the easiest. 573 00:30:12,520 --> 00:30:16,640 We need to go and figure out some way to like go off off the, 574 00:30:16,920 --> 00:30:18,680 you know, right. Like it's like we got 2 575 00:30:18,680 --> 00:30:20,760 depressions on a hill. It's like when you're skiing, 576 00:30:20,760 --> 00:30:21,160 right? Yeah. 577 00:30:21,160 --> 00:30:24,760 You don't want to go all the way down right to the, the 578 00:30:24,760 --> 00:30:25,720 chairlift. Yes. 579 00:30:25,960 --> 00:30:28,720 In Mammoth you sometimes you want to go to the outhouse in 580 00:30:28,720 --> 00:30:30,560 the back to get your grilled cheese safe. 581 00:30:30,840 --> 00:30:33,640 Right. But that requires being very 582 00:30:33,640 --> 00:30:37,200 cognizant of which turns you're taking down the ski hill, right? 583 00:30:37,200 --> 00:30:39,520 Otherwise you're just going to end up in the lodge like 584 00:30:39,520 --> 00:30:43,240 everyone else and then have to wait like 2 hours to go up the 585 00:30:43,240 --> 00:30:45,040 mountain. We've all been. 586 00:30:45,040 --> 00:30:46,080 There, yeah, we've all been there. 587 00:30:46,080 --> 00:30:47,280 But no, but that's actually a really. 588 00:30:47,280 --> 00:30:52,360 That's a really interesting insight, in that a suboptimal 589 00:30:52,360 --> 00:31:00,520 path can actually lead to the the derivative effects that we 590 00:31:00,520 --> 00:31:03,720 are looking for, yes, that are not necessarily naturally 591 00:31:03,720 --> 00:31:04,960 occurring. Yes, exactly. 592 00:31:04,960 --> 00:31:07,680 The reason why naturally occurring diamond is always 593 00:31:07,680 --> 00:31:12,600 naturally occurring that cubic diamond is because it's not a 594 00:31:12,600 --> 00:31:14,680 controlled process in the Earth's crust, right? 595 00:31:14,840 --> 00:31:18,120 So it's just easy for the carbon to settle into the natural cubic 596 00:31:18,120 --> 00:31:19,960 diamond. But if we really want to go for 597 00:31:19,960 --> 00:31:23,760 this hexagonal thing got to be real tight and real specific. 598 00:31:23,960 --> 00:31:26,480 And perhaps that's why the meteorite was showing these 599 00:31:26,480 --> 00:31:28,040 cases, right? Because like, I mean, the 600 00:31:28,040 --> 00:31:32,280 scenario is crazy, yes, it's a space rock coming at like it's 601 00:31:32,320 --> 00:31:35,680 very high speed, yes, 10s of kilometers per second, right, 602 00:31:35,720 --> 00:31:37,480 slamming into rock, right, right. 603 00:31:37,600 --> 00:31:40,560 This is a very key like scenario, yes. 604 00:31:40,840 --> 00:31:44,520 So, so with that in mind, let's try to figure out how are we 605 00:31:44,520 --> 00:31:47,200 going to do this, right? How are we going to manufacture 606 00:31:47,200 --> 00:31:49,480 our hexagonal diamond and not cubic diamond? 607 00:31:49,560 --> 00:31:50,560 Yes. They use something called a 608 00:31:50,560 --> 00:31:55,000 Kauai type large volume press. So this was conceptualized by 609 00:31:55,000 --> 00:32:00,720 Professor Naoto Kawaii. It's a uniaxial hydraulic press 610 00:32:00,720 --> 00:32:04,080 with six steel anvils that are inward. 611 00:32:04,840 --> 00:32:07,440 Here's the key idea here. There's multiple stages. 612 00:32:08,080 --> 00:32:11,640 There's the inner stage, then there's the second stage anvil, 613 00:32:11,640 --> 00:32:13,120 and then there's an outer stage anvil. 614 00:32:13,400 --> 00:32:17,600 What I want to do is press, and when I press, the intermediate 615 00:32:17,600 --> 00:32:19,880 stage is going to press from all directions. 616 00:32:20,800 --> 00:32:24,360 Okay, so it's not just going to give me this kind of force, it's 617 00:32:24,360 --> 00:32:27,440 gonna give me an all direction type of force, Yes. 618 00:32:27,440 --> 00:32:30,400 And then that all direction type of force is gonna press on an 619 00:32:30,400 --> 00:32:36,120 even smaller thing that is going to then let me control how and 620 00:32:36,120 --> 00:32:39,160 in what direction and how much I am able to put pressure. 621 00:32:39,560 --> 00:32:42,040 So that's my high pressure and then high temperature. 622 00:32:42,040 --> 00:32:45,080 I can just like make the thing hot from a variety of different 623 00:32:45,080 --> 00:32:47,120 mechanisms because. It seems the variable here that 624 00:32:47,200 --> 00:32:49,400 it needs to be modified is not the heat. 625 00:32:49,400 --> 00:32:51,280 But the pressure, and here's why. 626 00:32:51,440 --> 00:32:57,080 The pressure is what matters. But they actually started not 627 00:32:57,080 --> 00:33:00,720 with just normal graphite, but with a specific type of graphite 628 00:33:00,720 --> 00:33:04,760 called highly oriented pyrolytic graphite. 629 00:33:05,080 --> 00:33:06,640 This is a photo from their supplement. 630 00:33:07,000 --> 00:33:10,240 On the top is the normal graphite that you use in lead. 631 00:33:10,360 --> 00:33:14,640 In pencil lead graphite is a bunch of layers of carbon rings. 632 00:33:14,640 --> 00:33:18,000 Okay, it's layers on layers of carbon rings, but in naturally 633 00:33:18,000 --> 00:33:22,520 occurring graphite, the layers are kind of, you know, off each 634 00:33:22,520 --> 00:33:24,200 other. They're not completely flat. 635 00:33:24,600 --> 00:33:31,720 OK, what I want is exactly flat graphite, OK, not off where like 636 00:33:31,720 --> 00:33:34,560 some some carbon atoms are closer than other carbon atoms. 637 00:33:34,760 --> 00:33:37,760 I want exactly flat. So they created a high pressure 638 00:33:37,760 --> 00:33:41,600 environment and then a rapid cooling thing to make your 639 00:33:41,600 --> 00:33:45,720 amorphous graphite, so to speak, this very highly oriented 640 00:33:45,960 --> 00:33:48,920 pyrolytic graphite. Now what is the advantage there? 641 00:33:49,280 --> 00:33:55,760 The advantage there is that the graphite itself has ABAB memory. 642 00:33:56,800 --> 00:33:59,360 Oh, very. This is where it's going. 643 00:33:59,360 --> 00:34:02,080 Yeah. Yep, Yep, Yep, the. 644 00:34:02,280 --> 00:34:05,080 The cooking the the material that they're trying to cook with 645 00:34:05,360 --> 00:34:07,920 already has the geometry of their end product. 646 00:34:07,920 --> 00:34:10,600 Right, right. And and naturally occurring 647 00:34:10,600 --> 00:34:15,880 graphite is naturally imperfect and those imperfections lead to 648 00:34:15,880 --> 00:34:19,960 getting to lead to the destination of the, the global 649 00:34:19,960 --> 00:34:24,440 minima. But, and that's so interesting, 650 00:34:24,639 --> 00:34:29,239 but because we are now making sure that we're having a 5 Wagyu 651 00:34:29,239 --> 00:34:33,800 beef going in and not around the corner grocery store beef going 652 00:34:33,800 --> 00:34:36,719 in, we're going to get exactly what we want as the chef on the 653 00:34:36,719 --> 00:34:37,480 out. Exactly. 654 00:34:37,480 --> 00:34:40,719 And so this, you can already see the ABAB stacking, you can 655 00:34:40,719 --> 00:34:43,440 imagine the lower layer is B, the upper layer is A. 656 00:34:43,440 --> 00:34:46,080 And now I can just stack this on top of one another, right? 657 00:34:46,480 --> 00:34:50,560 And so now when I press on them, perhaps that geometry is going 658 00:34:50,560 --> 00:34:52,199 to be. Reserved. 659 00:34:52,280 --> 00:34:54,560 That makes sense. There's another problem though. 660 00:34:54,560 --> 00:34:56,880 Just because you start with ABAB graphite, right? 661 00:34:56,880 --> 00:34:59,560 It's going to be ABAB one on top of the other. 662 00:34:59,880 --> 00:35:03,760 If I push from all directions, that might cause the graphite to 663 00:35:03,760 --> 00:35:06,080 scrunch up, losing that symmetry. 664 00:35:06,360 --> 00:35:10,440 So I need to be able to only press from the top and bottom. 665 00:35:10,440 --> 00:35:13,960 OK, OK, Now in any type of press, that's very difficult. 666 00:35:14,400 --> 00:35:22,400 But what they did was they added a layer of aluminum on top and 667 00:35:22,400 --> 00:35:25,280 the bottom. And what that alumina does is 668 00:35:25,280 --> 00:35:28,240 not distribute any of the stress laterally just because of the 669 00:35:28,240 --> 00:35:31,120 way aluminum works. And all of the stress was in the 670 00:35:31,120 --> 00:35:33,960 up and down direction. So they had the press and on the 671 00:35:33,960 --> 00:35:36,280 press they layered aluminum on the top and the bottom so that 672 00:35:36,280 --> 00:35:39,000 when they were pressing, the stress was only in the vertical 673 00:35:39,000 --> 00:35:40,240 direction. OK. 674 00:35:40,960 --> 00:35:45,200 Once they do that, finally this is how it should work in theory. 675 00:35:45,440 --> 00:35:47,960 They did large scale molecular dynamic simulations. 676 00:35:47,960 --> 00:35:51,600 Here we've got layers on layers of that ABAB graphite and you 677 00:35:51,600 --> 00:35:55,680 can see a tiny defect is forming and as you press the orange is 678 00:35:55,680 --> 00:35:58,720 that hexagonal diamond, it rapidly forms, right? 679 00:35:58,920 --> 00:36:03,200 There's kind of a nucleation zone where the defect kind of 680 00:36:03,200 --> 00:36:06,560 starts and the layers of graphite are covalently bonding 681 00:36:06,560 --> 00:36:08,960 to one another. And then as you press more and 682 00:36:08,960 --> 00:36:14,280 more it rapidly sort of like like a like a contagion, right 683 00:36:14,280 --> 00:36:17,040 that that bond sort of spreads out. 684 00:36:17,680 --> 00:36:21,120 It propagates from this like initial inciting incident 685 00:36:21,120 --> 00:36:26,120 location. And this is so now understanding 686 00:36:26,520 --> 00:36:32,120 the the component parts, this makes a lot more sense in terms 687 00:36:32,120 --> 00:36:36,320 of you know, because normally what you would get in this use 688 00:36:36,320 --> 00:36:38,240 case is the spreading of cubic diamonds. 689 00:36:38,560 --> 00:36:42,400 But because we've created our specific type of graphite, 690 00:36:42,720 --> 00:36:45,920 because we've created the specific pressure mechanism, and 691 00:36:45,920 --> 00:36:49,080 we've coded it at the top and bottom to make sure the pressure 692 00:36:49,080 --> 00:36:50,120 was. Distributed only yeah. 693 00:36:50,120 --> 00:36:52,920 And as you can see, the the it's only being squished this way 694 00:36:53,040 --> 00:36:54,800 vertically, right? It's not being squished the 695 00:36:54,800 --> 00:36:57,600 other way, right, right. And so that those two dimensions 696 00:36:57,600 --> 00:36:59,960 this dimension and the one inside and out is being 697 00:36:59,960 --> 00:37:01,560 preserved. The only part that's getting 698 00:37:01,560 --> 00:37:03,720 squished is vertical. And that's why we're getting 699 00:37:03,960 --> 00:37:06,840 very specific hexagonal graphite, sorry, hexagonal 700 00:37:06,840 --> 00:37:07,560 diamond. Yes. 701 00:37:07,560 --> 00:37:10,000 And so this is the molecular dynamic simulation, right? 702 00:37:10,160 --> 00:37:12,680 That they where they show this is how we think it should 703 00:37:12,680 --> 00:37:14,440 happen, right. This is part of their paper. 704 00:37:14,600 --> 00:37:18,000 And obviously for this type of paper, you want to show the 705 00:37:18,000 --> 00:37:20,200 mechanism. OK, so this was a very cool 706 00:37:20,200 --> 00:37:22,760 molecular dynamic simulation that they're showing. 707 00:37:23,120 --> 00:37:28,400 So they do the experiment and they come up with samples. 708 00:37:28,400 --> 00:37:30,000 These are what the samples look like yes. 709 00:37:30,600 --> 00:37:32,160 You've got some pretty large samples. 710 00:37:32,160 --> 00:37:35,920 So that bar is 200 microns yes, five of those is a millimeter. 711 00:37:36,240 --> 00:37:38,920 So this is about the size of a millimeter plus, which means I 712 00:37:38,920 --> 00:37:41,480 can see it with my naked eye. Right Before, everything was 713 00:37:41,480 --> 00:37:45,160 like submicron, right level. Like I had to go into the Kenyan 714 00:37:45,160 --> 00:37:47,880 Diablo meteorite, go under a scanning tunneling microscope, 715 00:37:47,880 --> 00:37:50,520 and even then there was that dude who was like, no, this is 716 00:37:50,520 --> 00:37:53,880 just cubic diamond right here. The whole thing they're saying 717 00:37:53,880 --> 00:37:57,680 is hexagonal diamond, yes. OK, yes, and and the the, the, 718 00:37:57,880 --> 00:38:01,480 the idea being it, it both passes just like the kind of the 719 00:38:01,480 --> 00:38:04,160 sniff test because of its size. Like it's just like, Oh well, if 720 00:38:04,160 --> 00:38:06,480 you can't make it that big then it I don't care. 721 00:38:06,840 --> 00:38:08,960 But it then also makes it easier to look at it. 722 00:38:08,960 --> 00:38:11,880 Yeah, because now with something this big, I can actually start 723 00:38:11,880 --> 00:38:14,680 doing X-ray diffraction studies in a clean manner. 724 00:38:14,840 --> 00:38:17,840 I can do transmission electron microscopy in a clean manner. 725 00:38:18,200 --> 00:38:21,400 And so at first all they did was X-ray diffraction and this thing 726 00:38:21,400 --> 00:38:24,320 called selected area electron diffraction, which is just 727 00:38:24,320 --> 00:38:26,440 instead of X-rays, you're using electrons. 728 00:38:26,720 --> 00:38:29,240 And they did a Vickers hardness scale. 729 00:38:30,320 --> 00:38:37,000 On the left you're seeing the X-ray diffraction on the X axis 730 00:38:37,000 --> 00:38:40,280 is like an angle of like how the X-ray that's coming in is 731 00:38:40,280 --> 00:38:42,920 getting bumped out. And then on the Y axis, you're 732 00:38:42,920 --> 00:38:45,480 seeing like what the absorption rate is, right? 733 00:38:45,600 --> 00:38:47,000 Like the detector? Yes. 734 00:38:47,240 --> 00:38:52,880 And the little spots are where you're seeing the distances 735 00:38:52,880 --> 00:38:56,320 between atoms. And they're saying that this is 736 00:38:56,320 --> 00:38:59,160 key to showing that this is his hexagonal diamond. 737 00:38:59,160 --> 00:39:00,440 Yes. They also do the Vicar's 738 00:39:00,440 --> 00:39:04,400 hardness scale. Now I can read the peer review. 739 00:39:05,200 --> 00:39:07,120 OK, So what do you think? Right. 740 00:39:07,120 --> 00:39:09,600 The peer reviewers are gonna read this and I. 741 00:39:09,600 --> 00:39:12,120 Just want, I just want to note really briefly because you know, 742 00:39:12,120 --> 00:39:14,560 there is a little bit of a in the zeitgeist right now. 743 00:39:14,560 --> 00:39:21,360 There is a public debate about Chinese universities and the 744 00:39:21,360 --> 00:39:23,600 legitimacy of the work that they do. 745 00:39:24,320 --> 00:39:27,640 I'm saying this is what the Zeitgeist conversation is like 746 00:39:27,840 --> 00:39:31,240 in the US and this was published in Nature. 747 00:39:32,480 --> 00:39:35,000 Which is a Springer publication from the UK. 748 00:39:35,160 --> 00:39:39,640 So, you know, and they're, what's great, which you talked 749 00:39:39,640 --> 00:39:41,760 about this recently, is they're now putting the reviewer notes 750 00:39:42,440 --> 00:39:45,600 on these papers so you can get a little bit more of an insight 751 00:39:45,600 --> 00:39:49,240 into how the sausage was made to make a better characterization 752 00:39:49,240 --> 00:39:51,040 about your own perspective of the study. 753 00:39:51,320 --> 00:39:53,880 And so I'm just, I, I know that there's, I, I think there's been 754 00:39:53,880 --> 00:39:57,720 a little bit of poo pooping that's been undeserved and you 755 00:39:57,720 --> 00:40:00,040 can go just look. Yeah, and you can look and see 756 00:40:00,040 --> 00:40:01,640 what people are saying, right and. 757 00:40:02,480 --> 00:40:05,840 If we look at that peer review paper, so version zero, that's 758 00:40:05,840 --> 00:40:08,200 the one that they initially submit to the editor. 759 00:40:08,360 --> 00:40:11,480 The editor then deems, OK. I mean, if it's bulk hexagonal 760 00:40:11,480 --> 00:40:13,920 diamond, this does deserve getting published into Nature. 761 00:40:14,080 --> 00:40:18,240 So now I'm going to put it off and give it for review to the 762 00:40:18,280 --> 00:40:20,600 some of the top scientists in the field who know what they're 763 00:40:20,600 --> 00:40:24,760 talking about. OK, In this case, reviewer one 764 00:40:25,240 --> 00:40:29,080 comes back after version 0 and he says overall this paper 765 00:40:29,080 --> 00:40:31,520 should be rejected. Classic, classic. 766 00:40:31,520 --> 00:40:36,160 Usually it's reviewer 2, right? Because like reviewer 1 is like, 767 00:40:36,560 --> 00:40:39,920 cuz imagine you're like opening up your peer review file, right? 768 00:40:39,920 --> 00:40:42,520 And usually like reviewer 1 is like kind of nice about it. 769 00:40:42,520 --> 00:40:45,000 And then reviewer 2 is just going at it here. 770 00:40:45,000 --> 00:40:48,680 Like, I guess the editor didn't change the, you know, cuz the 771 00:40:48,720 --> 00:40:51,120 editor could have just like changed it doesn't matter who 772 00:40:51,120 --> 00:40:55,360 you wanted to is, right? But anyways, they open up the 773 00:40:55,360 --> 00:40:58,880 peer review file and imagine the 1st overall, this should be 774 00:40:58,960 --> 00:41:02,440 rejected. OK, so here's the complaint that 775 00:41:02,440 --> 00:41:05,440 reviewer #1 is making. He's saying that basically the 776 00:41:05,440 --> 00:41:09,120 X-ray diffraction and this electron diffraction, those two 777 00:41:09,120 --> 00:41:11,880 data sets are inconsistent. We don't know what the original 778 00:41:11,880 --> 00:41:13,040 version of the figures are, right? 779 00:41:13,040 --> 00:41:14,960 So we can't see. But apparently they were 780 00:41:14,960 --> 00:41:18,480 inconsistent and they didn't analyze different axes. 781 00:41:18,680 --> 00:41:20,840 Like you know, with with the with the crystal, there's like 782 00:41:20,840 --> 00:41:23,240 different directions that I can sort of probe. 783 00:41:23,400 --> 00:41:27,960 I can just rotate my sample on my X-ray diffraction apparatus 784 00:41:27,960 --> 00:41:30,920 and then I can probe different directions of the crystal. 785 00:41:30,920 --> 00:41:32,960 They didn't do that. That's I think that's fair. 786 00:41:33,200 --> 00:41:35,200 That's totally fair. They also didn't do this thing 787 00:41:35,200 --> 00:41:37,400 called right veld refinement, which is a way to 788 00:41:37,400 --> 00:41:40,680 computationally clean up diffraction data, which 789 00:41:40,680 --> 00:41:43,560 apparently like everyone does. So they didn't do that and 790 00:41:43,720 --> 00:41:46,280 they're using this is this one I thought was really hilarious. 791 00:41:46,280 --> 00:41:50,160 They're using diamond, cubic diamond, the normal diamond, to 792 00:41:50,160 --> 00:41:54,400 probe the hardness of this thing, and they're claiming that 793 00:41:54,400 --> 00:41:57,840 this thing is harder. That doesn't quite make any 794 00:41:57,840 --> 00:41:59,000 sense. Yeah, yeah. 795 00:41:59,000 --> 00:42:00,600 Yeah, right. You're, you're, you've got, 796 00:42:00,600 --> 00:42:02,680 you've got something that's really hard and then you're 797 00:42:02,680 --> 00:42:05,160 scratching it with something that you're claiming is not as 798 00:42:05,160 --> 00:42:07,680 hard, right. But then how are you scratching 799 00:42:07,680 --> 00:42:08,160 it? Right. 800 00:42:08,800 --> 00:42:11,120 Yeah. If the, if the original thing is 801 00:42:11,120 --> 00:42:14,200 thing is not as hard, right? And if are you really sure that 802 00:42:14,200 --> 00:42:17,320 the scratch you made is like enough to give you data for the 803 00:42:17,320 --> 00:42:18,880 Vickers hardness scale, right, right. 804 00:42:18,880 --> 00:42:21,560 If it's harder than the thing that you're using to scratch 805 00:42:21,560 --> 00:42:24,400 like like we're in unknown territory here because usually 806 00:42:24,400 --> 00:42:27,160 when we talk about how hard is something, we take a normal 807 00:42:27,160 --> 00:42:30,240 diamond that we know is at A hardness of 10 and we scratch it 808 00:42:30,240 --> 00:42:31,880 and then we see what the indentation is. 809 00:42:32,040 --> 00:42:34,040 And then from that you can calculate, OK, where is it on 810 00:42:34,040 --> 00:42:35,960 the hardness scale here? You're saying this is harder 811 00:42:35,960 --> 00:42:37,920 than the thing we're using to probe it, right? 812 00:42:38,080 --> 00:42:40,520 Doesn't make any. Sense No, it it it does the the 813 00:42:40,520 --> 00:42:42,920 radio speaker dial does not go to 11. 814 00:42:42,960 --> 00:42:44,920 Yeah. OK, so that's reviewer 1, 815 00:42:44,920 --> 00:42:47,560 Reviewer 2, what's very nice about it, OK, he said. 816 00:42:47,600 --> 00:42:52,080 You know, bulk hexagonal diamond is a very important thing. 817 00:42:52,320 --> 00:42:55,320 Therefore, the study seems important and could deserve to 818 00:42:55,320 --> 00:42:56,880 be published in a journal like Nature. 819 00:42:56,880 --> 00:43:00,120 He's saying you've got a chance, but I'm not convinced. 820 00:43:00,320 --> 00:43:02,680 He says the data obtained from these many different methods to 821 00:43:02,680 --> 00:43:06,120 characterize the sample looks convincing in principle, but 822 00:43:06,120 --> 00:43:08,120 there's some important questions that remain. 823 00:43:08,640 --> 00:43:13,240 So the authors go back. And the key thing is with 824 00:43:13,240 --> 00:43:16,640 Reviewer 2, the concerns that he said, the important questions 825 00:43:16,640 --> 00:43:19,480 that remain are very similar to author 1 to reviewer one. 826 00:43:19,520 --> 00:43:22,560 Yeah, except reviewer one was straight up like, yeah, this is 827 00:43:22,560 --> 00:43:23,880 not this. I don't know what are. 828 00:43:24,440 --> 00:43:25,760 We doing here? Yeah. 829 00:43:26,040 --> 00:43:29,040 Okay, so the authors come back and they did do multiple 830 00:43:29,040 --> 00:43:32,000 directions. Okay, so in this one, if you see 831 00:43:32,000 --> 00:43:37,000 this is Figure 22A and B show AB stacking, you see that? 832 00:43:37,200 --> 00:43:40,720 You see the little orange dots, That's A B, A/B, A/B, A/B. 833 00:43:40,720 --> 00:43:44,040 This is electron microscopy. Very clear. 834 00:43:44,080 --> 00:43:47,040 Yes, very clear. Right on the bottom row, you see 835 00:43:47,040 --> 00:43:48,240 hexagonal lattice. Yeah, yeah. 836 00:43:48,800 --> 00:43:50,360 Yeah, OK. Yeah, it is quite. 837 00:43:50,560 --> 00:43:53,640 It's like it's there, right? The ABAB stacking is in the top 838 00:43:53,640 --> 00:43:54,800 row. They've they've done the 839 00:43:54,800 --> 00:43:57,000 simulation on the right hand side of like what it should look 840 00:43:57,000 --> 00:43:58,560 like. And on the bottom row, yeah, 841 00:43:58,800 --> 00:44:01,160 they're they're they're showing the hexagonal stacking. 842 00:44:01,200 --> 00:44:02,600 Yeah, very nice. Yeah, yeah. 843 00:44:02,600 --> 00:44:05,000 OK, so. And this is exactly what the 844 00:44:05,000 --> 00:44:08,600 peer review process is. Yeah, like this is the point is, 845 00:44:08,600 --> 00:44:12,400 is that we want to get things accurate as accurately as 846 00:44:12,400 --> 00:44:13,840 possible and as correctly as possible. 847 00:44:13,840 --> 00:44:15,120 And so it's a, it's a natural back. 848 00:44:15,120 --> 00:44:18,400 It's a natural back and forth and credit to the editor of this 849 00:44:18,400 --> 00:44:20,520 thing. He didn't take the Reviewer 1 850 00:44:20,800 --> 00:44:24,000 feedback too seriously and gave the authors another chance, 851 00:44:24,040 --> 00:44:26,520 right? Yes, especially because I mean 852 00:44:26,520 --> 00:44:29,520 reviewer 2 had like positive things to say and said that 853 00:44:29,520 --> 00:44:32,320 there is definitely a chance. I think if both editors, I mean 854 00:44:32,320 --> 00:44:35,040 if both reviewers were like, no, yeah, it would have been kind of 855 00:44:35,040 --> 00:44:37,880 bad, right. So anyways, they did show the 856 00:44:37,880 --> 00:44:40,200 multiple directions. They showed that ABAB stacking 857 00:44:40,200 --> 00:44:43,040 and the hexagonal stuff, They also did this right, Feld 858 00:44:43,040 --> 00:44:45,120 analysis. This is a kind of computational 859 00:44:45,120 --> 00:44:49,160 trick where you say, OK, what if, what if the sample is fully 860 00:44:49,160 --> 00:44:52,360 hexagonal or it's a mixture of hexagonal and cubic? 861 00:44:52,600 --> 00:44:55,120 What would the theoretical distribution look like? 862 00:44:55,320 --> 00:44:57,840 And then if I take a difference of the two, which model fits 863 00:44:57,840 --> 00:44:59,720 better? And the one that's purely 864 00:44:59,720 --> 00:45:02,280 hexagonal fits better than the one that's a mixture. 865 00:45:02,400 --> 00:45:05,200 OK, so this is the analysis that reviewer one wanted. 866 00:45:05,440 --> 00:45:07,960 He got it. So the other thing, there's a 867 00:45:07,960 --> 00:45:10,720 question about uniformity. How uniform is the sample? 868 00:45:11,040 --> 00:45:12,680 Which is a good. Which is a good question. 869 00:45:12,840 --> 00:45:18,000 So here they took 11 different random samples of like a part of 870 00:45:18,000 --> 00:45:21,920 their sample and they did X-ray diffraction on that to show that 871 00:45:21,920 --> 00:45:25,200 the X-ray diffraction that comes out of whatever part of the 872 00:45:25,200 --> 00:45:28,120 sample is pretty identical. Right, this is. 873 00:45:28,120 --> 00:45:30,760 These are 11 different X-ray diffraction experiments, but 874 00:45:30,760 --> 00:45:31,960 they all look basically the same. 875 00:45:32,120 --> 00:45:36,880 Like the the spacing of the Yeah of the maxima Yeah of your X-ray 876 00:45:36,880 --> 00:45:37,960 diffraction is about the. Same. 877 00:45:37,960 --> 00:45:40,040 Yeah, right. It's also just beautiful. 878 00:45:40,080 --> 00:45:43,200 Yeah, very beautiful. And the hexagonal structure that 879 00:45:43,200 --> 00:45:44,560 you see is indicative. Yeah. 880 00:45:44,680 --> 00:45:47,800 Like, like it's like, yeah. I have never looked at that 881 00:45:47,800 --> 00:45:48,480 much. Yeah. 882 00:45:49,080 --> 00:45:52,760 Extra crystallography or electron microscopy? 883 00:45:53,160 --> 00:45:56,280 Microscopy photography. But you can. 884 00:45:56,480 --> 00:45:58,680 I can see the thingy. Yeah. 885 00:45:59,200 --> 00:46:04,200 Without much analysis, yeah. And finally they also, instead 886 00:46:04,200 --> 00:46:06,280 of doing the Vickers hardness scale, which is like the 887 00:46:06,280 --> 00:46:09,840 scratching on the diamond thing, reviewer one suggested that they 888 00:46:09,840 --> 00:46:13,120 should do something called pulsed echo experiments. 889 00:46:13,520 --> 00:46:17,200 This is a way that you can basically send sound waves 890 00:46:17,200 --> 00:46:20,560 effectively through a material and the response of that 891 00:46:20,560 --> 00:46:23,720 material lets you calculate the elastic modulus of that 892 00:46:23,720 --> 00:46:25,440 material. And then there's ways to back 893 00:46:25,440 --> 00:46:29,560 calculate what the hardness is. So he said if your scratch test 894 00:46:29,800 --> 00:46:32,600 and this echo experiment give you the same number, then I'll 895 00:46:32,600 --> 00:46:34,120 believe you. So they did it. 896 00:46:34,920 --> 00:46:38,560 It did come out, it showed that the Young's modulus was bigger 897 00:46:38,560 --> 00:46:41,680 than diamonds. And so finally version 3, which 898 00:46:41,680 --> 00:46:44,480 is the fourth version because you start with version 0. 899 00:46:44,640 --> 00:46:48,640 So with version 3, reviewer one finally says that he's happy 900 00:46:48,640 --> 00:46:50,720 with the version. He says the author's revised the 901 00:46:50,720 --> 00:46:52,600 paper according to the recommendations. 902 00:46:52,840 --> 00:46:55,440 Now the paper and supplement provide all the relevant 903 00:46:55,440 --> 00:46:58,280 information and the results are truly convincing. 904 00:46:58,360 --> 00:47:01,400 Exclamation point. And at the end and in the middle 905 00:47:01,400 --> 00:47:03,920 he's saying that I believe refining all of this was worth 906 00:47:03,920 --> 00:47:05,520 it. So he's kind of saying, like, I 907 00:47:05,520 --> 00:47:08,320 know I gave you guys a hard time, but I think it was worth 908 00:47:08,320 --> 00:47:10,240 it because now I think this paper is stellar. 909 00:47:10,360 --> 00:47:12,640 And at the end, he says congratulations for this 910 00:47:12,640 --> 00:47:14,640 important work. And he signs his own name. 911 00:47:15,040 --> 00:47:18,120 Oliver Chauhanar. Yeah. 912 00:47:18,200 --> 00:47:19,880 Yeah. He's from the University of 913 00:47:20,080 --> 00:47:21,920 Nevada, Las Vegas, I believe. So he did. 914 00:47:22,120 --> 00:47:23,600 He put his name. He doesn't have to. 915 00:47:23,600 --> 00:47:24,360 Right. Right. 916 00:47:24,360 --> 00:47:25,960 But he put his own name there to show. 917 00:47:26,000 --> 00:47:27,200 OK, this is who I was. Yeah. 918 00:47:27,800 --> 00:47:29,160 I appreciate the work you did right. 919 00:47:29,160 --> 00:47:32,880 So reviewer one turns out to be like kind of a hard ass, but 920 00:47:32,960 --> 00:47:36,480 right, The paper is quite incredible because now no one 921 00:47:36,480 --> 00:47:37,520 can say. Anything. 922 00:47:37,520 --> 00:47:40,480 No, this is, and I think this is the key point why I wanted to 923 00:47:40,480 --> 00:47:44,640 preface the cultural moment and the sort of judgement of, you 924 00:47:44,640 --> 00:47:48,160 know, it, it, it, this process really doesn't matter. 925 00:47:48,200 --> 00:47:50,200 And I do think some of the feedback that was brought up 926 00:47:50,520 --> 00:47:51,880 makes total sense. Yeah, yeah, yeah. 927 00:47:52,080 --> 00:47:54,240 Like very reasonable. And like reviewer 2 said, the 928 00:47:54,240 --> 00:47:55,280 same stuff, right? Yeah. 929 00:47:55,360 --> 00:47:59,080 And if it worked, it's it was easily resolvable, yeah. 930 00:47:59,120 --> 00:48:01,640 It didn't require huge refactor or anything like. 931 00:48:01,640 --> 00:48:04,440 That you've got the sample. Just yeah, do a little more 932 00:48:04,760 --> 00:48:05,720 double checking. Yeah. 933 00:48:06,400 --> 00:48:08,120 And fascinating. Yeah. 934 00:48:09,200 --> 00:48:11,520 And this is, and again, we covered this in episode 5, 935 00:48:11,600 --> 00:48:13,200 right? And in it's slightly different, 936 00:48:13,200 --> 00:48:14,840 little similar but slightly different way. 937 00:48:14,840 --> 00:48:16,520 Yes. So now let's talk about that. 938 00:48:16,520 --> 00:48:17,240 OK. All right. 939 00:48:17,640 --> 00:48:21,200 So this particular paper is coming out of Zhengzhou 940 00:48:21,200 --> 00:48:25,680 University in China, also Nanjing University in China, and 941 00:48:25,680 --> 00:48:27,760 you said Hunan University, right, in China. 942 00:48:27,920 --> 00:48:31,040 These are all sort of like in the northern central part. 943 00:48:31,120 --> 00:48:32,600 And China. And I want to just pronounce 944 00:48:32,760 --> 00:48:33,560 and. In the East. 945 00:48:33,720 --> 00:48:35,680 Hanan versus. Hunan okay, sorry. 946 00:48:36,000 --> 00:48:37,880 Just be okay, because they're fair. 947 00:48:38,440 --> 00:48:41,480 Sure, totally enough. And the paper that we covered 948 00:48:41,480 --> 00:48:45,560 last year was out of the Shanghai Advanced Research in 949 00:48:45,560 --> 00:48:47,680 Physical Sciences Center in China, right? 950 00:48:47,680 --> 00:48:52,080 And that was synthesis of bulk hexagonal diamond already Funny 951 00:48:52,080 --> 00:48:54,920 because these guys use synthesis of bulk hexagonal diamond and 952 00:48:54,920 --> 00:48:57,640 these guys just like bulk. Hexagonal diamond. 953 00:48:58,120 --> 00:49:03,360 Right. OK, also in Nature now this new 954 00:49:03,360 --> 00:49:10,240 paper does not cite. No, no. 955 00:49:10,560 --> 00:49:15,240 OK, I thought that was pretty hilarious because the reviewer 956 00:49:15,240 --> 00:49:19,760 comments in reviewer 2 actually does acknowledge this, that a 957 00:49:19,760 --> 00:49:23,640 recent paper has come out that shows bulk hexagonal synthesis 958 00:49:23,640 --> 00:49:26,880 of bulk hexagonal diamond. But he says that this paper was 959 00:49:26,960 --> 00:49:29,760 submitted before that one got accepted. 960 00:49:29,760 --> 00:49:32,320 So it's not like these guys knew about that paper, right? 961 00:49:33,160 --> 00:49:40,320 But what that also tells me is that these guys, Lai and other 962 00:49:40,320 --> 00:49:43,360 authors from Zhengzhou University, had the chance to 963 00:49:43,360 --> 00:49:46,920 cite that paper and did not because they saw it in the 964 00:49:46,920 --> 00:49:49,440 reviewer comments. Also, if you're in the field, 965 00:49:49,560 --> 00:49:52,560 you're not going to not be aware of a Nature paper that came out 966 00:49:52,560 --> 00:49:53,600 saying the same thing. Right. 967 00:49:53,840 --> 00:49:56,160 Right. And in they were in the process 968 00:49:56,160 --> 00:49:58,320 of revision, which means they could have easily snuck in that 969 00:49:58,880 --> 00:50:00,560 that, but they didn't. OK. 970 00:50:00,560 --> 00:50:02,320 I think already that's hilarious. 971 00:50:02,320 --> 00:50:02,920 Yeah. Yeah, Yeah. 972 00:50:02,920 --> 00:50:04,760 OK. There's clearly something. 973 00:50:04,800 --> 00:50:09,560 We didn't sample your your your chord from your 1967 hit no no. 974 00:50:09,560 --> 00:50:12,600 No, no, no, yeah, yeah. And that same, that same group 975 00:50:13,200 --> 00:50:16,480 from the Shanghai University also did another paper in 976 00:50:16,480 --> 00:50:21,240 February, but this was in Nature Materials and again, it was a 977 00:50:21,240 --> 00:50:23,760 general approach for synthesizing hexagonal diamond 978 00:50:24,040 --> 00:50:27,920 using post graphite phases. So slightly different method but 979 00:50:27,920 --> 00:50:31,120 still no mention of even this paper. 980 00:50:32,680 --> 00:50:35,760 This is like this is some beef. Dude, yeah, this is what beef 981 00:50:35,760 --> 00:50:37,560 looks like. Yeah, in the research. 982 00:50:37,680 --> 00:50:44,120 Really, there's something right So so I wanted to dig a little 983 00:50:44,120 --> 00:50:46,800 bit deeper yes. So Nature has a news article 984 00:50:46,960 --> 00:50:52,560 about this, right, where they talk about this, they talk about 985 00:50:52,840 --> 00:50:55,240 like this paper and all of the other research around it. 986 00:50:55,240 --> 00:50:57,880 And Nature being Nature, they have to acknowledge that they 987 00:50:57,880 --> 00:51:00,040 themselves published a previous paper, right? 988 00:51:00,080 --> 00:51:02,480 Right. So what, what's going on, right? 989 00:51:02,640 --> 00:51:04,880 So I'm just going to read a little bit snippet of that, of 990 00:51:04,880 --> 00:51:09,200 that news article, right? First of all, we we see Schoner, 991 00:51:09,200 --> 00:51:16,000 who's the the reviewer #1 he gives a brief expose about like, 992 00:51:16,000 --> 00:51:18,440 he says that the pattern of the depression peaks that are 993 00:51:18,440 --> 00:51:22,280 obtained very closely mimic that of hexagonal diamond. 994 00:51:22,280 --> 00:51:27,160 And to demonstrate hexagonal structure conclusively, there's 995 00:51:27,320 --> 00:51:30,880 a few more peaks that I really wanted to see once I saw that 996 00:51:31,160 --> 00:51:33,880 the new paper shows those peaks. That's why I believe it. 997 00:51:34,000 --> 00:51:38,320 OK so he's he, you know, kudos were reviewer #1 gave them a 998 00:51:38,320 --> 00:51:41,400 hard time but. And then went to go comment on 999 00:51:41,400 --> 00:51:43,760 the public. On the public thing and said I 1000 00:51:43,760 --> 00:51:47,040 was the reviewer, I believe it. I stand by this paper along with 1001 00:51:47,040 --> 00:51:49,320 the author. Right, which is a crazy. 1002 00:51:49,320 --> 00:51:50,920 Yeah. OK, You know, that's cool. 1003 00:51:50,920 --> 00:51:52,040 Yeah. Right, Yeah. 1004 00:51:52,040 --> 00:51:54,920 Now they mentioned last year another research group 1005 00:51:54,920 --> 00:51:57,160 independently reported making hexagonal diamond. 1006 00:51:57,160 --> 00:52:00,280 This is the 2025 paper, Yes, out of Shanghai. 1007 00:52:01,720 --> 00:52:06,640 And they get a quote from those authors, from the from the from 1008 00:52:06,640 --> 00:52:10,440 last year's paper. And that guy Ho Kwang Mao from 1009 00:52:10,440 --> 00:52:13,560 Shanghai, he says it looks like the new paper is very similar to 1010 00:52:13,560 --> 00:52:16,760 ours. I have to say I cannot see any 1011 00:52:16,760 --> 00:52:20,440 difference. He's quoted right. 1012 00:52:20,440 --> 00:52:24,080 And then and then and then he says, but we're glad they have 1013 00:52:24,080 --> 00:52:28,400 reproduced our results, which is effectively a scientific way of 1014 00:52:28,400 --> 00:52:30,240 saying they didn't do anything new, right? 1015 00:52:30,600 --> 00:52:33,560 They just, I can't. It's effectively they're saying, 1016 00:52:33,560 --> 00:52:35,560 I can't believe a reproduction paper. 1017 00:52:35,640 --> 00:52:37,400 Yeah, right. Also got into nature, right. 1018 00:52:37,520 --> 00:52:41,280 So something happened, bro. Yeah, like something happened 1019 00:52:41,280 --> 00:52:46,800 with these two groups and shot Schauner, who's the reviewer #1 1020 00:52:47,200 --> 00:52:50,840 he did a minor clap back. He said it's almost the same. 1021 00:52:51,280 --> 00:52:54,200 But he pointed out that the X-ray analysis by Mao and his 1022 00:52:54,200 --> 00:52:59,120 colleagues, this is the previous paper that X-ray analysis lacked 1023 00:52:59,120 --> 00:53:02,080 one or two of the diffraction peaks that are expected to be 1024 00:53:02,080 --> 00:53:06,120 seen in hexagonal diamond. So he's saying this paper has a 1025 00:53:06,120 --> 00:53:10,120 definitive right like hexagonal diamond X-ray diffraction 1026 00:53:10,120 --> 00:53:12,760 pattern, right, that perhaps the other one didn't right. 1027 00:53:12,800 --> 00:53:16,080 But I just this whole Sega is hilarious to me and and you. 1028 00:53:16,120 --> 00:53:20,200 Actually brought this up when we did episode 5 where you you said 1029 00:53:20,240 --> 00:53:23,720 I think there might be another team yes that is working on 1030 00:53:23,720 --> 00:53:25,080 this. Within China. 1031 00:53:25,080 --> 00:53:28,680 Within China, but the this these guys got out first. 1032 00:53:28,680 --> 00:53:31,680 Yeah. And you had literally like it 1033 00:53:31,680 --> 00:53:34,080 was. I wish I will try to see if we 1034 00:53:34,080 --> 00:53:37,200 can do a like our our, our throwback thing here, because 1035 00:53:37,880 --> 00:53:41,200 your statement on that episode is almost literally, yeah. 1036 00:53:41,440 --> 00:53:44,560 And it turns out it was this, It was this team, It was that that 1037 00:53:44,560 --> 00:53:47,120 was doing it. I mean, so two things. 1038 00:53:47,120 --> 00:53:50,560 One, this is hilarious. I love scientific beef and beef 1039 00:53:50,560 --> 00:53:52,760 among scientists. I wonder what conferences are 1040 00:53:52,760 --> 00:53:53,520 like. Yeah. 1041 00:53:53,760 --> 00:53:56,160 You know. Because because I think the 1042 00:53:56,160 --> 00:54:01,560 point is like this is this is it is A50 plus year old yeah, 1043 00:54:02,440 --> 00:54:05,840 unsolved problem. So the prestige and the street 1044 00:54:05,840 --> 00:54:08,440 cred and yadda yadda that you'll get from it. 1045 00:54:08,440 --> 00:54:13,840 Yeah for being first yeah matters yes, a lot, especially 1046 00:54:13,840 --> 00:54:16,800 in the material size, because this resolves the simulation 1047 00:54:17,640 --> 00:54:20,360 like people who are Pooh poohing all The Sims are wrong. 1048 00:54:21,480 --> 00:54:23,600 Well, I guess not. Yeah, I guess not. 1049 00:54:23,600 --> 00:54:24,840 I guess this thing is real, right? 1050 00:54:24,960 --> 00:54:26,520 So that's one thing. This is hilarious. 1051 00:54:26,520 --> 00:54:31,280 And science beef is also funny, I think. 2:00 this shows just 1052 00:54:31,280 --> 00:54:34,400 how good China has gotten. Yes, with fundamental material 1053 00:54:34,400 --> 00:54:36,360 science research. Yeah, because they're having 1054 00:54:36,360 --> 00:54:37,840 internal beef. Right. 1055 00:54:38,280 --> 00:54:38,840 Right. OK. 1056 00:54:38,880 --> 00:54:40,880 Yeah. There's institutions within 1057 00:54:40,880 --> 00:54:43,800 China, yes, that are beefing with each other, right? 1058 00:54:44,320 --> 00:54:46,120 About like who came first, right? 1059 00:54:46,280 --> 00:54:48,960 It's not even China is saying we're first, right? 1060 00:54:49,120 --> 00:54:52,200 It's like who among us is first is first, right? 1061 00:54:52,680 --> 00:54:55,440 It's China. Chinese science has made leaps 1062 00:54:55,440 --> 00:54:59,160 and bounds in terms of where they were just 20 years ago 1063 00:54:59,400 --> 00:55:01,120 compared to where they are now, right? 1064 00:55:01,160 --> 00:55:02,880 Yep. Where 20 years ago this kind of 1065 00:55:02,880 --> 00:55:04,560 competition was unheard of, right? 1066 00:55:04,960 --> 00:55:06,800 And now and now we're we're at this stage. 1067 00:55:07,000 --> 00:55:09,120 It is. It's very impressive. 1068 00:55:10,000 --> 00:55:12,440 If you're watching this on a clip, be sure to watch the full 1069 00:55:12,440 --> 00:55:16,400 episode because the details are very juicy. 1070 00:55:16,400 --> 00:55:18,440 Yeah, the actual science is fascinating. 1071 00:55:19,000 --> 00:55:23,200 Why it worked is fascinating. How much grief the reviewers 1072 00:55:23,200 --> 00:55:25,880 gave them, right? This was not easy for these 1073 00:55:25,880 --> 00:55:27,360 scientists to publish. Right. 1074 00:55:27,400 --> 00:55:30,560 And and this is not coming out of the South China Morning Post, 1075 00:55:30,560 --> 00:55:34,680 no or you know an outlet that you can perceive to have 1076 00:55:34,680 --> 00:55:37,080 geopolitical reason to frame it one way or another. 1077 00:55:39,400 --> 00:55:42,200 And also the material science implications of this as you 1078 00:55:42,200 --> 00:55:44,880 brought up at the beginning from industrial application etcetera. 1079 00:55:44,880 --> 00:55:47,600 Obviously there's a scaling issue, yadda, yadda, all this 1080 00:55:47,600 --> 00:55:51,760 normal stuff. We caveat regardless, hugely, 1081 00:55:51,760 --> 00:55:58,840 hugely impactful and and I think sort of we'll see how the, 1082 00:55:58,840 --> 00:56:03,120 because we, we're, we've this is now 6-7 months later from our 1083 00:56:03,120 --> 00:56:05,720 first coverage. Yeah, we'll see how the story 1084 00:56:05,720 --> 00:56:08,600 progresses, but this seems to be a little bit of the closing of 1085 00:56:08,600 --> 00:56:10,680 the book on a couple of the aspects. 1086 00:56:10,680 --> 00:56:13,560 Yeah, yeah, I think, I mean, there's two, there's two big 1087 00:56:13,560 --> 00:56:15,720 research groups that have shown that this thing can work. 1088 00:56:15,920 --> 00:56:18,440 I'm sure now other countries and other labs are going to 1089 00:56:18,480 --> 00:56:21,520 replicate this thing. Now the big question mark is, 1090 00:56:21,520 --> 00:56:24,520 can this thing scale or do we have to figure out a new way to 1091 00:56:24,520 --> 00:56:28,640 create hexagonal diamond that scales industrial industrially, 1092 00:56:28,640 --> 00:56:29,600 right? But it works. 1093 00:56:29,600 --> 00:56:33,480 Yeah, and we can do it. Great story again. 1094 00:56:33,480 --> 00:56:39,680 Out of Out of nature on March 4th, Zhang Zhao, Nanjing and 1095 00:56:40,280 --> 00:56:44,200 Hanan Universities in China. A fall to our episode 5. 1096 00:56:44,960 --> 00:56:49,040 If you liked this episode, if you like against seeing the 1097 00:56:49,040 --> 00:56:52,720 connections, our last deep dive episode at a very similar thing. 1098 00:56:52,920 --> 00:56:56,080 If you're a long time listener, you're probably like me where 1099 00:56:56,080 --> 00:56:58,240 you're starting to get these things much quicker. 1100 00:56:58,440 --> 00:57:02,080 You can see how they all relate to each other, how we build on 1101 00:57:02,080 --> 00:57:04,880 top of the past work. We are truly standing on the 1102 00:57:04,880 --> 00:57:06,880 shoulders of giants. Now. 1103 00:57:07,160 --> 00:57:10,240 Should we ask for the comment for this episode to create a 1104 00:57:10,240 --> 00:57:13,080 replacement for the De Beers? Diamonds are forever. 1105 00:57:13,400 --> 00:57:17,360 Some diamonds marketing, yeah, some not. 1106 00:57:17,360 --> 00:57:18,920 Diamonds are hexagonal, but something. 1107 00:57:18,920 --> 00:57:21,520 Something yeah, come up with your best tagline. 1108 00:57:21,640 --> 00:57:24,720 Best tagline because we need a rebrand for diamonds now because 1109 00:57:24,720 --> 00:57:26,280 it's technically a different thing, Yeah. 1110 00:57:26,440 --> 00:57:27,080 There's. Two types. 1111 00:57:27,080 --> 00:57:29,560 There's two types. Two types. 1112 00:57:29,960 --> 00:57:33,000 I am your host. Lesson are I joined as always by 1113 00:57:33,000 --> 00:57:37,360 my Co host and our resident PhD Krishna Chowdhury. 1114 00:57:37,360 --> 00:57:41,520 We appreciate you all joining us on this journey and we will see 1115 00:57:41,520 --> 00:57:42,600 you later this week.