While travelling recently, I made the mistake of wandering into Tiffany's in the airport. I was quite tempted to have breakfast, but resisted the urge. I have always liked diamonds, but those sparkling, glittering magnificent stones, set so perfectly were something else - I am in love. I just hope my boyfriend doesn't mind. I think I now know their secret...
An international research team with scientists from Australia, Germany, Italy, the UK, and the United States have discovered a pulsar with an interesting neighbour. Pulsars are highly magnetized, rotating neutron starts that emit a pulsing beam of radiation. They are formed when the core of a massive star is compressed during a supernova (a huge explosion), which collapses into a neutron star. Most pulsars have no companions whatsoever, but this one appears to have a very special one.
The orbiting neighbour has a mass close to that of Jupiter and appears to be a remnant of a carbon- and oxygen-rich white dwarf star that measures no more than 55,000 kilometers across. It's make-up and mass mean that it may have a very interesting quality.
''It's highly speculative, but if you shine a light on it, I can't see any reason why it wouldn't sparkle like a diamond," says Travis Metcalfe of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, talking to New Scientist.
This find is very rare considering the nature of pulsars. Also, a planet that dense is also a rare find.
Some interesting facts...
On Earth, diamonds are formed at pressures of 45-60 kbar. A kilobar is a metric unit used to measure high pressure. This high pressue corresponds to a depth of 125-200 kilometres below the Earth’s surface where the pressure is around fifty thousand times that of atmospheric pressure at the Earth’s surface.
Some diamonds form at depths of 300-400 kilometres, or even deeper, but these diamonds are particularly rare.
Diamonds are formed at temperatures between 900°C and 1,300°C.
So it makes sense that an old star (very hot) that has collapsed and compressed (very high pressure) that was composed mostly of carbon may indeed ressemble a very, very large diamond.
Guess I know where to have brunch... just hope I don't suffer from space-sickness!
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