Diamond and graphite are both allotropes of carbon; their vastly different properties come down to the way the carbon atoms are arranged (Image: Materialscientist, used under CC 3.0 by-sa) ...

More information: Michael R. Armstrong et al, Highly ordered graphite (HOPG) to hexagonal diamond (lonsdaleite) phase transition observed on picosecond time scales using ultrafast x-ray ...

We were even more amazed to observe graphite crystallizing spontaneously at pressures up to 15 GPa — conditions where diamond should be the stable form." The unexpected behavior follows a principle ...

Simulations of formation of graphite (top) and diamond (bottom) under very high temperature and pressure (Davide Donadio, UC Davis). Differences in crystallization Through the simulations, the team ...

Converting graphite into diamond has been a long held dream of alchemists the world over. In the modern era, materials scientists have puzzled over this process because it’s hard to work out why ...

Diamond is a different example,” researchers said. It can switch its internal structure to a different order, thereby turning into graphite.

By comparing the diamond, graphite and lonsdaleite across 18 different ureilite meteorites, we started to form a picture of what probably happened to produce the folded structures we found.

Both diamond and graphite are made entirely out of carbon, as is the more recently discovered buckminsterfullerene (a discrete soccer-ball-shaped molecule containing carbon 60 atoms).