Currently, diamond is regarded to be one of the hardest and most scratch-resistant natural materials in the world. Most diamonds found in nature and often used in jewelry display a cubic crystal ...

If you've ever heard someone referred to as a "special little snowflake," the implication is that they're beautiful and precious because of all the myriad ways in which they are unique. The old saying ...

Snow dancing, Ullr calling and deep yearning for more snow this season appear to have paid off! After such a dry fall and early winter, abundant snowfall finally is allowing us to enjoy our sliding ...

A team of Chinese scientists may have cracked the secret behind the strange Canyon Diablo diamonds. Hexagonal in form rather than cubic, the process behind how these diamonds formed has, until now, ...

In the iconic "Sound of Music" score, "My Favorite Things," a young Julie Andrews lists snowflakes as objects that bring her ...

Scientists have used a mix of physical and chemical properties to bend salt into hexagonal crystals for the first time ever. They formed the thin layer of crystalline salt on a substrate (foundation ...

Physicists synthesized 2D atom-thin sheets of boron with large crystal domains, which are needed to make next-gen electronics. Borophene -- two-dimensional (2-D) atom-thin-sheets of boron, a chemical ...

Researchers in Europe have found a way to make silicon-germanium (SiGe) alloys emit light efficiently, a breakthrough that has the potential to revolutionize integrated silicon photonics. In that ...

Hexagonal boron nitride (hBN), an insulating material only one atom thick, is suitable for industrial-scale production. It is used in semiconductor devices and enhances the performance of other 2D ...