The hardest materials on the planet

If you think that diamond is the hardest material on the planet, you're completely wrong. Thanks to advanced technology, scientists have created artificial "metamaterials" with much superior hardness.

Here is a summary of the 10 hardest metamaterials in the world today, in increasing order:

10. Spider silk: The silk of Darwin's Bark spider is considered to be the toughest biological material ever known. They are even ten times stronger than Kevlar - the material used by humans to make bulletproof vests.

9. Silicon carbide (SiC): This material has a very high hardness and has been used to make Chobham iron armor of battle tanks.

8. Nanospheres / Nano-Kevlar: These self-assembling tiny nanoparticles are the hardest organic material anyone has ever made. They can lead to the development of a body armor.

7. Diamond: The hardest natural material in the world is resistant to scratches.

6. Wurtzite boron nitride: This is the material created in volcanic eruptions and is theoretically 18% stiffer than diamond. However, in practice, people have never obtained this quantity of materials large enough to serve this hypothesis test.

5. Lonsdaleite: This material is formed when graphite-containing meteorites collide with the Earth. Simulation results show that lonsdaleite may be 58% stiffer than diamond, but researchers have not tested it in practice because they are too rare.

4. Dyneema: This polythen synthetic plastic is advertised as the hardest fiber in the world. Characteristic is lighter than water but 15 times stronger than steel, dyneema can block flying bullets.

3. Metal glass : This type of alloy glass is a combination of hardness and strength. It is considered the most durable material on Earth today.

2. Buckypaper: This nanomaterial comes from tubular carbon molecules, 50,000 times thinner than a human hair. Compared to steel, buckypaper is 500 times stiffer, but 10 times lighter.

1. Graphene: This is a layer of carbon with a thickness of 1 molecule, 200 times harder than steel. To pierce a thin sheet of graphene like saran plastic paper, you need pressure created by a balanced elephant on a pencil.