Let’s get all the sexual innuendos out of the way first. Next we’ll drop anyone on the list who thinks Diamonds are the hardest mineral in the world.. wait, what? That rock on your partners’ finger isn’t in 1st place anymore?! Not anymore!Much like Calculus exams held at 8 in the morning, Diamonds are pretty hard. On a scale of 1-10, 10 being the hardest mineral, they hold the 10th place (so.. they’re the hardest). But Wait, you’re asking, you said in the opening paragraph that Diamonds weren’t the hardest thing anymore, but here you’re saying they’re the hardest thing? No, I said the hardest mineral. There are plenty of things harder than carbon diamonds now a days, and currently holding the gold medal (heh.. too many elements..) are HYPERDIAMONDS!!
Yes, that’s a real thing; I didn’t just make that up..
Hyperdiamonds are just a fraction more dense than regular and natural forming diamonds, at 0.3%. They are the Spinal Tap of the Modulus scale and they take it to 11, holding 491 gigapascals of isothermal bulk, where as a regular diamond is a puny 442. The Isothermal bulk rating is basically a way to assign a number to the resistance of uniform compression it can withstand. The more pressure it can hold up against, the higher the rating. Theoretically it could go up to infinite amounts of gigapascals, but then that whole concept of “special relativity” comes in and says no dice to that..
As an example of various forms of Isothermal Bulk Ratings:
What’s more than hyperdiamonds you may be wondering? Well, there’s a lot of theoretical concepts, such as the matter inside a black hole. More realistically, there’s Beta Carbon Nitride, however the stuff is so difficult to synthesize that it can’t accurately be measured. The closest match was in the high 390 GPa range. The test was cut short simply because at the time, we didn’t have a way to get more of the stuff to press further into itself. It’s a strong candiate to be harder than Hyperdiamonds, and currently holds the gold metal of probable but still theoretical “hardest thing in the world”.