'Gem Planet' Orbiting Pulsar

A so-called "diamond planet" has been discovered by an international research team, orbiting a pulsar about 4,000 light-years away.

The small planet, orbiting the pulsar PSR J1719-1438, is believed to be denser than platinum, yet made up entirely of oxygen and carbon. The forces upon the planet are so extreme, scientists believe, that the planet must be largely crystalline - meaning that it's likely that it's a form of diamond as well.

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“The density of the planet is at least that of platinum and provides a clue to its origin”, said Matthew Bailes from Swinburne University of Technology in Australia.
The team thinks that the planet is the tiny core that remained of a once-massive star after narrowly missing destruction by its matter being siphoned off toward the pulsar. They found the pulsar among almost 200,000 gigabytes of data using special codes on supercomputers at Swinburne University of Technology, at the University of Manchester, United Kingdom, and at the INAF Cagliari Astronomical Observatory, Italy."
Astronomy News http://www.astronomy.com/en/News-Observing/News/2011/08/A planet made of diamond.aspx

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http://www.scribd.com/doc/24544973/Cordwainer-Smith-On-the-Gem-Planet

 

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Very interesting although a link would have been nice. It suggests a core of metastable metallic hydrogen (MSMH) imo i.e. dark matter, a remnant of a stellar interior. Diamond "planet" was once a star

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Sry fixed that.

 

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a dark matter core?! really? That's possible?

 

I think so

 

if it used to be a star, could this ever happen to our sun?

 

Very unlikely. Our sun is predicted to balloon out before going supernova, I believe. It's the proximity of the small star next to a pulsar which is the key. Science doesn't really understand pulsars though. they're missing the supermagnetic dark matter aspect which Newton overlooked.

 

It won't become a supernova. You talk so much crap common.

Our sun is destined to be a red giant, not a nova.

 

It will probably settle to be a black dwarf.

 

Yeah thanks! I thought I made a mistake after posting. Glad to see someone's awake!

 

"Whatchew talkin' 'bout Willis?"

 

red nova or black dwarf? :shrug:

 

A black dwarf is one end cycle of a cooling of a red giant. No such think as a red nova.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_dwarf

 

Is it not a black dwarf now? I do not believe they mentioned it making its own light.

Funny thing about this is that I just watched a program on the science channel that said that there should be NO black dwarfs yet as not enough time has passed since the big bang to make one (white dwarfs are supposed to live for a very long time, longer then the current age of Universe "The subsequent lifetime of white dwarfs is thought to be on the order of the lifetime of the proton, known to be at least 10^32 years. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_dwarf ).

Guess we were wrong again lol.

 

There is no big crunch, there is no end to an open universe, so your assumptions are wrong. The black dwarf will be the final stage of our star. There are no if's but's or maybe's here.

 

What the hell are you talking about? I was talking about the GEM PLANET being a black dwarf as we speak, and that they would be EXCEEDINGLY RARE because it should take 10^32 years for one to form from a white dwarf normally and only about 10.5^10 years have passed. No mention was made about a big crunch in my post or my source. Maybe try reading the whole post before you speak.

 

I'm sorry, I must have read you wrong.

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that is one big diamond. Lets go get us some chunks . O.K. if diamonds are so valuable how much would this diamond be worth at today's prices and sense the world is amortized can we amortize a space program based on the value of this diamond planet . Collateral so to speak . I think we could spir the futures market here . Wadja think . It makes just as much sense as our existing financial system now . Our currency can be backed by the diamond planet . God I am good . The rescission is over . We all got a diamond as big as a planet . Fuck who else is going to claim it . Space Aliens that don't give a shit about shiny things ? Get real it is ours

 

The diamond planet is estimated as 34,175 miles across, which is about five times Earth's diameter.
Minimum price for Diamond at the moment starts from US$700.00 for I-3 grade and maximum price for 1 ct should not be more than US$4,000.00 for FL grade.
The carat is a unit of mass equal to 200 mg. The giant celestial diamond has slightly more mass than Jupiter but is 20 times as dense.

The planet itself orbits the pulsar in a little more than two hours. The entire system would fit within the diameter of our sun.