Diamond Planet Discovered 4,000 Light Years Away
An international team of scientists has discovered a small planet 4,000 light years away from earth that they believe is made of diamonds.
Thursday, researchers from Australia, the U.K., the U.S., Germany, and Italy all reported the unusual planet in the constellation of Serpens.
The scientists believe that the “diamond planet” is the only remainder of what was a huge star in our own Milky Way Galaxy.
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The carbon-based planet has a very high density, and despite its smaller size, has slightly more mass than Jupiter. The density and presence of carbon indicates that the material of the planet is certain to be crystalline-make it effectively diamond.
Matthew Bailes of Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne said, “The evolutionary history and amazing density of the planet all suggest it is comprised of carbon – i.e. a massive diamond orbiting a neuron star every two hours in an orbit so tight it would fit inside our own Sun,” according to Reuters.
Bailes is the vice president of the research team at Swinburne, and previously published research about the planet in the international journal, Science.
Researchers involved are not sure what the planet would look like up close, and mining any material from the planet is out of the question.
Speaking to ABC News, Bailes said, “If you landed on the surface of this planet to try and harvest it you’d actually be crushed by the gravity which is about 25 times stronger than that of the earth.”
The planet orbits a small, fast, spinning star, or a pulsar, which emits a beam of radio waves. Astronomers noted the pulses as being systematically modulated, and concluded that they were a result of the gravitational pull from the small planet.
Measurements by astronomers indicate that the new planet measures over 60,000 km across, which is about five times Earth’s diameter, and is about 300 times heavier than earth, reported the International Business Times.
The discovery marks only the third time that one of more than 1,800 known pulsars have been found to harbor planets.
