Azaran on 28/8/2011 at 00:30
(
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/08/25/us-planet-diamond-idUSTRE77O69A20110825) This is awesome.
Astronomers have spotted an exotic planet that seems to be made of diamond racing around a tiny star in our galactic backyard.
The new planet is far denser than any other known so far and consists largely of carbon. Because it is so dense, scientists calculate the carbon must be crystalline, so a large part of this strange world will effectively be diamond.
"The evolutionary history and amazing density of the planet all suggest it is comprised of carbon -- i.e. a massive diamond orbiting a neutron star every two hours in an orbit so tight it would fit inside our own Sun," said Matthew Bailes of Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne.
Lying 4,000 light years away, or around an eighth of the way toward the center of the Milky Way from the Earth, the planet is probably the remnant of a once-massive star that has lost its outer layers to the so-called pulsar star it orbits.
Pulsars are tiny, dead neutron stars that are only around 20 kilometers (12.4 miles) in diameter and spin hundreds of times a second, emitting beams of radiation.
In the case of pulsar J1719-1438, the beams regularly sweep the Earth and have been monitored by telescopes in Australia, Britain and Hawaii, allowing astronomers to detect modulations due to the gravitational pull of its unseen companion planet.
The measurements suggest the planet, which orbits its star every two hours and 10 minutes, has slightly more mass than Jupiter but is 20 times as dense, Bailes and colleagues reported in the journal Science on Thursday.
In addition to carbon, the new planet is also likely to contain oxygen, which may be more prevalent at the surface and is probably increasingly rare toward the carbon-rich center.
Its high density suggests the lighter elements of hydrogen and helium, which are the main constituents of gas giants like Jupiter, are not present.
Just what this weird diamond world is actually like close up, however, is a mystery.
"In terms of what it would look like, I don't know I could even speculate," said Ben Stappers of the University of Manchester. "I don't imagine that a picture of a very shiny object is what we're looking at here."
Azaran on 28/8/2011 at 00:57
Yeah, science has really come a long way. I had seen an article a few months back saying that some distant planets that were discovered, if they have life, this life will probably be primarily black in colour, so as to better absorb the rays from that particular planet's sun - they say those planets have suns, but they're further away than our sun is from the earth, and so life will probably adapt by evolving a black outer colour to better retain the scarce rays..
What's also amazing about the diamond planet is apparently it has oxygen :wot:
Can you imagine? A possibly habitable planet made of diamond....:o
Aerothorn on 28/8/2011 at 01:03
I remember reading a similar thing a few years ago, except it was some sort of sun-sized diamond that emerged from a supernova or something (I'm sure my science is all off here, I don't remember the details).
Muzman on 28/8/2011 at 01:56
If it's a neutron star there's certainly no way we're going to live on it, that's for sure.
Pretty cool though. It's going to be fun speculating how that formed (for someone much cleverer than me).
ed: ooh wait. Should read Aerothorn before replying. First thought that popped into my head "Neutron star...maybe the kaboom made it/crystalised another planet? Would it survive?" Scratch that last bit and give me my honorary degree! And nobody ask me any hard maths questions.
demagogue on 28/8/2011 at 02:21
I can't help but think of:
Quote:
Remember when you were young, you shone like the sun.
Shine on you crazy diamond.
Now there's a look in your eyes, like black holes in the sky.
Shine on you crazy diamond.
You were caught on the crossfire of childhood and stardom,
blown on the steel breeze.
Come on you target for faraway laughter,
come on you stranger, you legend, you martyr, and shine!
You reached for the secret too soon, you cried for the moon.
Shine on you crazy diamond.
Threatened by shadows at night, and exposed in the light.
Shine on you crazy diamond.
Well you wore out your welcome with random precision,
rode on the steel breeze.
Come on you raver, you seer of visions,
come on you painter, you piper, you prisoner, and shine!
I saw or read something about the black plants to absorb the star's radiation too. What I remember interesting about it was if it were a binary system with two stars, there might even be two different families of plant life, one with black leaves and the other with green leaves, each targeting the light of the different stars.
BTW, on a different cool science note, I just finished reading The Theory of Almost Everything, which is a primer on the Standard Model (describes all particles/forces except gravity)... I feel like a better human just for reading it. Nevermind the scifi speculative stuff, it's humbling and awesome how much we already know very well. I recommend the book to anyone... It makes a good case that the Standard Model, for as ugly and incomplete as it is, is still the greatest, most successful theory in the history of science, possibly the greatest achievement in human thinking period. Predicted the magnetic moment of electrons to insane precision of something like 13 significant digits.
But what's really cool about it, IMO, was how suggestive it is for what reality is really like. It doesn't give any final explanation, but the pieces just set your imagination running, like you can almost feel what it might be like if only you have a few more pieces to solve the puzzle. Like a murder mystery except I couldn't turn to the last page to see who the real killer was because nobody knows yet! Well first of all it was cool because of all the detective work that have caught so many of his accomplices already; it was awesome to read the story behind each step of the puzzle, QED, EWT, QCD, being solved one at a time, the cool insight that cracked each one. But then each step takes you closer and closer to the final puzzle. You know he's out there; you can see some of his fingerprints; you have lots of suggestive hints you know add up to something but you just need that little insight to crack it (speaking of physics geniuses of course; I just want to read what they figure out.)
And just the visuals of it were inspiring. All these particles/fields with churning halos of virtual particles sparking in and out, the whole mass swimming in a sea of Lagrangian harmonic oscillators that push them around (with sometimes strange leaps vast distances, or did they really leap?), and interacting with each other through Yukawa couplings like two frenzied webs of sparks getting caught up in each other's tangle... I could almost feel the churning spacetime foam that should be out there somewhere. Best science book I've read in a long time; would recommend to anyone up to the challenge -- while a layman's book, it doesn't hold its punches on some of the technicalities.
BrokenArts on 28/8/2011 at 04:25
Price of diamonds will drop, just watch.
Xorak on 28/8/2011 at 06:36
Hasn't it been known for years that it rains diamonds on Neptune? It's actually plausible to see it first hand in some future generation.
1. Get to Neptune with large net
2. Use net to catch diamonds
3. ????
4. Profit
Nicker on 28/8/2011 at 06:37
Quote Posted by BrokenArts
Price of diamonds will drop, just watch.
Naw! De Beers will stick it in a vault somewhere to maintain their artificial scarcity strategy.
Tocky on 28/8/2011 at 07:08
I've always wanted a giant diamond bust of myself that could be seen from outer space. If I can figure a way to drag it back and carve it I'm golden.
