It's referred to as "polyyne" he
Polyyne said to be 40 times harder than diamond.
http://www.foresight.org/nanodot/?p=2111
The research is published he
Harder than Diamond: Determining the Cross-Sectional Area and Young's
Modulus of Molecular Rods.
Angewandte Chemie International Edition, Volume 44, Issue 45, Pages
7315-7483 (November 18, 2005).
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/c...30826/ABSTRACT
The research actually only calculated Young's modulus. It didn't
measure it.
Also the hardness claim is coming from the fact the calculated Young's
modulus was 40 times that of diamond, and hardness is correlated to
Young's modulus.
Bob Clark