Astronomers discover diamond-like planet in the sky
Astronomers have discovered a planet in our universe that is up to five times the size of Earth and is made almost entirely of diamond.
Nick Collins
By Nick Collins, Science Correspondent
7:00PM BST 25 Aug 2011
Scientists at the University of Manchester and international colleagues made the discovery while studying a rare spinning star which lies 4,000 light years from Earth in the Milky Way.
The unusual star – known as a pulsar – spins around hundreds of times every second, giving off beams of radio waves like a lighthouse as it turns.
But irregular movements in the radio pulses being received by scientists back on Earth told them something else must be getting in the way.
In a study published in the Science journal the researchers, led by Prof Matthew Bailes of Swinburne University of Technology in Australia, concluded that the beams were being swayed by a companion planet orbiting the star.
Even though the star itself has a diameter of just 20km – the size of a small city – the planet measures up to 60,000km across, about five times the Earth's diameter, and is about 300 times heavier.
It is believed to be the remnant of another, huge star which transferred its energy to the pulsar when it died, leaving behind a crystallised core made of carbon and oxygen, similar to diamond.
Despite measuring only 20km across, the pulsar known as J1719-1438 is so dense that its mass is almost one-and-a-half times greater than that of the sun.
Dropping a brick onto the star, Prof Bailes said, would generate about as much energy as an atom bomb.
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