'Diamond exoplanet' idea boosted by telescope find

Mods - I did a search and came up with 2 articles, but they were from Sept. This article was published today.

'Diamond exoplanet' idea boosted by telescope find

A US-British team of astronomers has discovered the first planet with ultra-high concentrations of carbon.

The researchers say their discovery supports the idea there may be carbon-rich, rocky planets whose terrains are made up of diamonds or graphite.

"You might see land masses and mountains made up of diamonds," the lead researcher Dr Nikku Madhusudhan told BBC News.

The study in Nature journal raises new questions about how planets are formed.

It seems a day does not go by without news talking about findings from space. Its probably a good thing we dont have the ability to travel the stars yet, as we would most likely fight over the planets diamonds lol.

So far atmospheres, liquid on surfaces, oxygen atmospheres, and now diamonds on a planet.

Can ET be far behind?

I liked to last part of the article:

An immediate question that is raised is why Wasp 12b is so much higher in carbon than the planets we know about.

The prevalent theory is that plenty of water ice was available when the planets in our Solar System formed. That could not have been the case for Wasp 12b.

Seems water / liquids are becoming a little more common place on extra solar planets as well.

Dec 26, 2007

Astronomers discovered the largest diamond of all times in space. The weight of the precious stone reportedly makes up ten billion trillion trillion carats or five million trillion trillion pounds).

The space diamond is virtually an enormous chunk of crystallized carbon, 4,000 kilometers in diameter. The stone is located at a distance of 50 light years from Earth, in the Constellation Centaurus.

DIANews

reply to post by AnteBellum


Im guessing thats the galactic equivelant of the Hapsburg Diamond?

reply to post by Xcathdra


Seriously!

Imagine what we could build using a diamond that large and this is only one that we have spotted so far there must be bigger ones out there.

reply to post by AnteBellum

I think it might be difficult to work with diamonds as a building material. Maybe it would be better if we learned how to create diamond structures in whatever form we wanted.

reply to post by Devino


Ive seen articles talking about that actually. Essentially building a diamond atom by atom, which could open some intresting doors in terms of construction techniques and new material.

i wonder how much diamonds are worth, when you live on a planet made of diamonds. and would they consider us crazy for putting way too much value on something so mundane.