How's this for a Diamond In The Rough?
Diamond star thrills astronomers
Twinkling in the sky is a diamond star of 10 billion trillion trillion carats, astronomers have discovered.
The cosmic diamond is a chunk of crystallized carbon, 4,000 km across,
some 50 light-years from the Earth in the constellation Centaurus.
It's the compressed heart of an old star that was once bright like our Sun but has since faded and shrunk.
Astronomers have decided to call the star "Lucy" after the Beatles song, Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.
Twinkle twinkle
"You would need a jeweller's loupe the size of the Sun to grade this
diamond," says astronomer Travis Metcalfe, of the Harvard-Smithsonian
Center for Astrophysics, who led the team of researchers that
discovered it.
The diamond star completely outclasses the largest
diamond on Earth, the 546-carat Golden Jubilee which was cut from a
stone brought out of the Premier mine in South Africa.
The huge cosmic diamond - technically known as BPM
37093 - is actually a crystallised white dwarf. A white dwarf is the
hot core of a star, left over after the star uses up its nuclear fuel
and dies. It is made mostly of carbon.
For more than four decades, astronomers have thought
that the interiors of white dwarfs crystallised, but obtaining direct
evidence became possible only recently.
The white dwarf is not only radiant but also rings like a gigantic gong, undergoing constant pulsations.
"By measuring those pulsations, we were able to study the hidden
interior of the white dwarf, just like seismograph measurements of
earthquakes allow geologists to study the interior of the Earth.
"We figured out that the carbon interior of this white
dwarf has solidified to form the galaxy's largest diamond," says
Metcalfe.
Astronomers expect our Sun will become a white dwarf
when it dies 5 billion years from now. Some two billion years after
that, the Sun's ember core will crystallize as well, leaving a giant
diamond in the centre of the solar system.
"Our Sun will become a diamond that truly is forever," says Metcalfe.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/sci/tech/3492919.stm
Published: 2004/02/16 15:31:25 GMT
After reading this story I thought, how cool would it be if this thing dropped to earth. Maybe we all could get a piece for no other reason than having one. Can you possibly imagine the size of this diamond? Seems the phrase, "as above so below", really does work, after all diamonds have been mined some centuries now. Here's to Diamonds in the Sky.
Any idea how many pieces of diamond jewelry could be created for this mother lode. Seems like the glaciers aren't the only source of diamond production. Crystallization occurs everywhere, as I understand it that is how diamonds form.
