When is a planet made of diamond not a planet made of diamond?
Perhaps when it’s a White Dwarf?
Perhaps when there’s not a shred of evidence that it’s actually made of diamond?
Yesterday Science announced the amazing discovery of an incredibly dense object that appears to be made of a crystalline form of carbon: possibly, ultra-dense diamond (Bailes et al. 2011, Science, DOI: 10.1126/science.1208890). The object orbits a recently-discovered pulsar, PSR J1719-1438, every two hours and ten minutes. It has a slightly higher mass than Jupiter (technically, its minimum mass), but the lack of evidence for direct interaction w … Read More
via Matt Burleigh’s Blog
This entry was posted on August 27, 2011 at 9:55 am and is filed under Astrohype, The Universe and Stuff with tags astronomy, diamond, planet, pulsar, white dwarf. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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In the Dark 
August 27, 2011 at 2:45 pm
I like Marc Kuchner’s idea that it might taste like a pizza. Presumably a burnt one if it’s mostly carbon.