An illustration of the diamond planet orbiting the neutron star.
Read more: Diamond planet | CNNGo.com http://www.cnngo.com/sydney/life/diamond-planet-huge-girls-best-friend-discovered-space-656809#ixzz1W6pzrUHM
A team of astronomers using an Austalian telescope has discovered a gigantic diamond planet.
Professor Matthew Bailes of Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne and his team used a telescope located in western New South Wales to gaze deep into space: 4,000 light years away from Earth, an eighth of the way to the center of the galaxy, their eyes lit on what has turned out to be a diamond planet.
The planet, five times the size of planet Earth, is 60,000 kilometers in diameter. Enough to keep many girls happy indeed.
“Essentially it’s all diamond,” said Dr. Michael Keith, of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), in Astronomy and Space Science. “It’s the remnants of a star. It's leftover carbon and diamond is a crystalline form of carbon.”
The diamond planet, officially named PSR J1719-1438, used to weigh as much as the sun. But as space diamond-refinement cosmically took place, the white dwarf diamond is now less than 1 percent of its former weight –- now the same weight as Jupiter.
That’s a lot of diamond.
In only two hours and 10 minutes it orbits a neutron star that is 20 kilometers in diameter, but so compact it weighs more than our sun.
“It’s a crazy, bonkers environment,” Dr. Keith said.
So could the galaxy unearth gems, opals and silver? “No, you could find some iron in space, but this is as fancy as it gets,” Dr. Keith said.
Nevertheless, maybe bachelors will now contemplate space travel for the first time, in a quest for the diamond planet.
“I’m sure it’s very beautiful, but it wouldn’t be very pleasant,” Dr. Keith said. “The neutron star omits cosmic rays and radiation through X-rays and gamma rays.”
“There’s no protective atmosphere and it would be very hot. You’d be blasted away.”
But the team of researchers from Australia, Germany, Italy, Britain and the United States are pretty excited, as they’ve shown that humans have long been looking for diamonds in the wrong place.
“But it’s more practical to use the ones we find on Earth –- you can wear them,” Dr. Keith said. “To wear this one you’d need more gold than the size of Earth to make bands.”
“It’s an engagement ring for a giant alien.”
http://www.cnngo.com/sydney/life/diamond-planet-huge-girls-best-friend-discovered-space-656809
No comments:
Post a Comment