If you rejigger carbon atoms, what do you get? Diamond. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works. Carbon is an incredible element. Arrange ...

Chemist and writer Primo Levi’s The Periodic Table—a memoir in the form of short stories about elements—closes with a chapter called “Carbon,” which tracks a single atom through time and space.

Where would carbon-based life be without carbon? There are 118 known chemical elements, but carbon is the fourth most abundant and perhaps the most important to human life. Everywhere you look, ...