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Diamond Planet Discovered

Caliburn

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(Reuters) - Astronomers have spotted an exotic planet that seems to be made of diamond racing around a tiny star in our galactic backyard.

The new planet is far denser than any other known so far and consists largely of carbon. Because it is so dense, scientists calculate the carbon must be crystalline, so a large part of this strange world will effectively be diamond.

"The evolutionary history and amazing density of the planet all suggest it is comprised of carbon -- i.e. a massive diamond orbiting a neutron star every two hours in an orbit so tight it would fit inside our own Sun," said Matthew Bailes of Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne.

Lying 4,000 light years away, or around an eighth of the way toward the center of the Milky Way from the Earth, the planet is probably the remnant of a once-massive star that has lost its outer layers to the so-called pulsar star it orbits.

Pulsars are tiny, dead neutron stars that are only around 20 kilometers (12.4 miles) in diameter and spin hundreds of times a second, emitting beams of radiation.

In the case of pulsar J1719-1438, the beams regularly sweep the Earth and have been monitored by telescopes in Australia, Britain and Hawaii, allowing astronomers to detect modulations due to the gravitational pull of its unseen companion planet.

The measurements suggest the planet, which orbits its star every two hours and 10 minutes, has slightly more mass than Jupiter but is 20 times as dense, Bailes and colleagues reported in the journal Science on Thursday.

In addition to carbon, the new planet is also likely to contain oxygen, which may be more prevalent at the surface and is probably increasingly rare toward the carbon-rich center.

Its high density suggests the lighter elements of hydrogen and helium, which are the main constituents of gas giants like Jupiter, are not present.

Just what this weird diamond world is actually like close up, however, is a mystery.

"In terms of what it would look like, I don't know I could even speculate," said Ben Stappers of the University of Manchester. "I don't imagine that a picture of a very shiny object is what we're looking at here."
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Astronomers have discovered the densest extrasolar planet yet: A Jupiter-mass remnant of a carbon- and oxygen-rich star that measures no more than 55,000 kilometers across. The odd world, whose density is on average at least 23 grams per cubic centimeter (or about twice that of lead), is probably crystalline and possibly largely composed of ultradense diamond. The planet orbits its parent sun—a pulsar, or a rapidly-spinning neutron star that emits an intense beam of radio waves, dubbed PSR J1719-1438—once every 2 hours and 10 minutes, the researchers report online today in Science. The planet’s orbit measures about 600,000 kilometers across, only 50% more than the average distance from Earth to the moon. How such a dense planet formed is unclear, the researchers say, but it’s probably the crystalline vestige of a white dwarf star whose atmosphere was stripped away by the parent pulsar. Most of the pulsars that spin faster than once per 20 milliseconds are part of a binary star system, but about 30% have no companions whatsoever, the scientists note. Only one other rapidly-spinning pulsar is known to be orbited by Earth-mass planets—a sign that exotic planets such as this megadiamond are, like their Earthly counterparts, rare indeed.
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A planet made out of diamond, that's just awesome =DD






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Rihari

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So they reckon there's oxygen on this diamond planet, which means possible life on that planet maybe?

@Mugi was thinking the exact same thing lol.
 
Igneel

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Mugiwara said:
>_____________< Density equal to diamond =/= made out of diamond.

Makes me think of this dude:
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xd
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everyone get a chisel and hammer....we gonna crack up mugi(diamond head) and sell him..... i'm gonna be filthy richxd
 
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