What the World Needs Now Is Superhard Carbon

Superhard materials are highly prized, ironically enough, for their flexibility. Not in terms of bending, but rather in terms of what they can be used to build. Creating scratch-resistant coatings, for example, could have any number of uses. So finding more of these materials is a priority for scientists, which is why a team from the University of Buffalo used artificial intelligence to identify 43 previously unknown forms of carbon that are thought to be stable and superhard. The 43 carbon structures are still theoretical, meaning that scientists have predicted them, but haven't actually brought them forward into creation yet.