
Q-Carbon, a substance harder than diamond - rglovejoy
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/03/science/q-carbon-harder-than-diamond.html
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bradleyjg
The press release seems significantly better, includes the abstract of the
papers, links to full texts, and isn't behind a paywall:
[https://news.ncsu.edu/2015/11/narayan-q-
carbon-2015/](https://news.ncsu.edu/2015/11/narayan-q-carbon-2015/)

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leeoniya
> Make Diamond at Room Temperature

then

> ... the temperature of the carbon is raised to 4,000 Kelvin

~~~
plus
4000 K locally, due to laser heating, as opposed to being in a kiln. More
importantly, it is done at ambient pressure, and doesn't need a diamond anvil
or other high-pressure chamber.

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gjmulhol
In case you want to see the original paper:
[http://scitation.aip.org/content/aip/journal/jap/118/21/10.1...](http://scitation.aip.org/content/aip/journal/jap/118/21/10.1063/1.4936595)

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jacquesm
The Q-Carbon age... This will be a revolution in tooling if they deliver and
it can be made cheap enough.

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DubiousPusher
Promising but this looks too good to be true. Most of the articles I can find
are regurgitations of the press release. Anyone find anything with an
independent take?

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gjmulhol
There won't be an independent take until someone can try to reproduce the
results which, given how simple the experimental setup seems to be, might not
take long but hasn't happened yet. I have read the paper, though, and it
appears to be a fairly complete study with good detail. It is a slightly
surprising result, but I would not characterize it as obviously challenging
the laws of physics or anything, it is just a manifestation of structural
changes on a nano-scale that yields pretty nice properties.

I also happen to know Jay Narayan's previous work (and have debated him on a
few occasions). I would say as a scientist, he is well respected and his
results have been verified over a long career, so there is more than likely
something here—even if it is more than meets the eye.

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jacquesm
The whole idea makes perfect sense. Quenching has been used to harden other
materials since ancient times, what happens is that the quenching causes rapid
contraction which in turn creates a density change. So I believe this is real,
there is no reason carbon should not exhibit this.

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fizx
That's not at all how or why quenching works. Quenching is used to accelerate
the rate at which a metal alloy solidifies/crystalizes such that the internal
arrangement of the components is affected. Quenching has nothing to do with
density, and since pure carbon is neither metallic or an alloy, quenching pure
carbon makes no sense at all.

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jacquesm
Hm, ok. I'm happy to stand corrected. What I remembered was the outer layer
cooling more rapidly than the inner layer resulting in a different crystal
layer on the outside and tension in the steel leading to a different density
than you'd get otherwise but that is apparently wrong. I'll read up on it, I
don't like mis-remembering stuff like this. Thanks for the correction!

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andrewflnr
IIRC that's what happens in glass with Prince Rupert's Drops (according to
Smarter Every Day).

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rdancer
"[R]esearchers say" this, "researchers say" that... Why not do real reporting,
and write a real article, which has verified facts, and doesn't need weasel
phrases?

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livingparadox
I'm not sure how they would be able to do that effectively without input from
researchers. I don't see that as a weasel phrase, but as a (reasonable IMO)
deference to experts in the field.

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georgeecollins
Reporters can contact sources. They call the person who wrote the paper or
other experts and then quote them in the article.

This has the benefit of making the reporter's story contain some actual unique
information. More importantly, it meant that the person reporting the story
had checked with a person to confirm what they were reporting. One of the
reasons that wrong stories get repeated in online journalism is that people
just rush to repost something without checking with anyone to make sure its
true.

