A diamond bigger than Earth?

By
Umar.Saleem
-
6
186

Forget the diamond as big as the Ritz. This one’s bigger than planet Earth.
The universe just got a bit richer with the discovery of an apparent diamond-rich planet orbiting a nearby star.
Dubbed 55 Cancrie, the rocky world is only twice the size of Earth but has eight times its mass—classifying it as a “super Earth,” a new study says. First detected crossing in front of its parent star in 2011, the close-in planet orbits its star in only 18 hours. As a result, surface temperatures reach an uninhabitable 3,900 degrees Fahrenheit (2,150 degrees Celsius)—which, along with carbon, make perfect conditions for creating diamonds.
NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope collected data on the planet’s orbital distance and mass, and resulting computer models created a picture of 55 Cancri e’s chemical makeup. “Science fiction has dreamed of diamond planets for many years, so it’s amazing that we finally have evidence of its existence in the real universe,” said study leader Nikku Madhusudhan, a postdoctoral researcher at Yale University. “It’s the first time we know of such an exotic planet that we think was born mostly of carbon—which really makes this a fundamental game-changer in our understanding of what’s possible in planetary chemistry.” At only 40 light-years away, in the northern constellation Cancer, the gemlike planet sits relatively near Earth. In dark skies, 55 Cancri e’s host star is clearly visible to the naked eye.

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6 COMMENTS

  1. There will come a time when we are nomads living off the minerals of the systems we inhabit – or die before we get that far.

  2. The planets our teachers focus on in school are the ones in our solar system. The planets being discovered and researched are outside of our solar system.

  3. This is good news indeed. Now all that we need to do is to make a spaceship that can take us to that planet in lightspeed and figure out a way to digout diamonds in such a hot environment. More like an Avatar film if some primates are also involved!

  4. Almighty Allah's creation , only 40 light years away , which in astronamical terms is in our neighborhood, however in terms of human being's scale it would take close to 760,000 years for our fastest spacecrafts at 38,000 mph to reach this planet. About the number of planets in just our galaxy, MILKYWAY, there are estimated to be one TRILLION , that is 1000,000,000000. And there are over 100 Billion galaxies in the visible universe. Furthermore the universe that we now know is turning out to be just our neighborhood. Such is the creation of Almighty Allah, Alla ho Akbar .

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