A Diamond Bigger Than Earth?

A Diamond Bigger Than Earth?

Orbiting a star that is visible to the naked eye, astronomers have discovered a planet twice the size of our own made largely out of diamond.

The rocky planet, called '55 Cancri e', orbits a sun-like star in the constellation of Cancer and is moving so fast that a year there lasts a mere 18 hours.

Discovered by a U.S.-Franco research team, its radius is twice that of Earth's with a mass eight times greater. That would give it the same density as Earth, although previously observed diamond planets are reckoned to be a lot more dense. It is also incredibly hot, with temperatures on its surface reaching 3,900 degrees Fahrenheit (1,648 Celsius).

Simply amazing in my opinion and it really does underscore how little we truly understand about our own galactic backyard. A diamond planet three times larger than earth where a year lasts 18 hours!

It would give precedent to support the view that planets of infinite chemical compounds exist out there in not only our on solar system but, throughout the unmapped far reaches of space.

Luckily the temperature there is above 1000 (1,648 to be exact) degrees celsius otherwise I fear 55 Cancri e would suffer the same plunder as earth's precious resources.

Imagine, planets multiple times the size of earth made of gold, platinum, silver, iron etc. etc. all floating around out there.

Truly astonishing and near incomprehensible to our limited minds.

Now if we could only rope that thing and bring it in just a little closer, De'Beers would lose their grip of both diamonds and Africa.

Nice find.

Peace

yyaaaaaiiiyy...diamond planet? incredible.. lets harvest it haha Nice Find OP

i'd like to know how they are able to discern that while professional jewellers on earth have been fooled by moissanite.

what equipment do astronomers have to detect diamonds 230 trillion miles away.

and why aren't they using it on earth, instead of relying on african warlords to send their captives to wallow in mud with a gold pan.

almost unbelievable.

i find it more believable that the u.s. government is in contact with extra-terrestrials and that they gave them the co-ordinates to this diamond planet, knowing how greedy certain people on earth are.

maybe to show humans how stupid our system of wealth is, when a whole planet bigger than earth is an entire diamond. trillions and trillions and trillions of carats of diamonds that would end all poverty on earth.

but then humans devised supply and demand. so it would be essentially worthless thus ensuring global poverty.

humans have to realize what true wealth is.

Betting some women out there would say "its not big enough".

If we could ever mine it, diamonds would be worthless. Which is good because we can use diamond in more practical applications.

Guess that $5000 diamond ring wont satisfy her any more!

reply to post by randomname


A spectrometer. We detect the light from the planet when it hits earth. We observe this light using a spectrometer. Every material in a world has a defined spectrograph so its easy to tell.

And we can make diamonds already, however the diamonds we make artificially are more expensive than having some warlords turning people into slaves. Not only that but the quality of artificial diamonds is not as "good" (shininess?, hardness, etc, I'm not a diamond expert) as natural diamonds.

Artifical diamonds are made in various ways, most common would be high pressure, high temperature, than chemical vapor deposition, using explosives (literally blow # up till it creates so much pressure it makes a diamond), and the newest method which would fix this blood diamond issue, ultra sound. But, they've only been able to create super tiny diamonds, micron sized.

But diamonds aren't totally useless, we just don't know what really to do with them other than jewelery. We use diamonds also to cut things which is useful. But diamonds could one day be used to store information, to be incorporated into our technology, making things faster and faster, and smaller. Every material serves a purpose, we just haven't found a purpose yet, or are unable to utilize it.

From 2004, a diamond SUN/Star
Diamond Sun

Twinkling in the sky is a diamond star of 10 billion trillion trillion carats, astronomers have discovered. The cosmic diamond is a chunk of crystallised carbon, 4,000 km across, some 50 light-years from the Earth in the constellation Centaurus. It's the compressed heart of an old star that was once bright like our Sun but has since faded and shrunk. Astronomers have decided to call the star "Lucy" after the Beatles song, Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.

I'm just wondering from a computational level, how much data a diamond processor that size could pipe.

Scientists build a Quantum computer inside a Diamond.

Certainly if we could have a quantum computer with a diamond that size, hmmm, we could think ourselves up the civilizational ladder to a level I, or even a II in no time.

If it hasn't been suggested here already.
I dub this planet "Lucy".

Assuming it also has marmalade skies.

The brits will just secretly send james bond good old 007 to check out the evil planet of diamonds and of course he'll blow it all up with wicked movie effects...

Oh wait they did that already..in Diamonds are forever..

reply to post by solarstorm


Is that a phrase you think women use often then?

Why should we mine it when we have plenty of diamonds here, or actually the russians have

Click here for full article

Russia is about to start tapping into a huge source of diamonds that could supply the world market for the next 3,000 years.

'The resources of super-hard diamonds contained in rocks of the Popigai crypto-explosion structure are by a factor of ten times bigger than the world's all known reserves,' he said. 'We are speaking about trillions of carats. By comparison, present-day known reserves in Yakutia (a Russian mine) are estimated at one billion carats.

So if there's a planet sized diamond (roughly) and it's one of the hardest substances known, and IF there are ETs.
Then I wonder what "resources" they would be after if they came here? Surely diamonds are now with stuff like water out of the question. Me thinks that a resource that worries me would be ........ us. Buggar, maybe the anal probing people talk about isn't such a "stretch" (oops)

At least we know NASA is not going to be sending a rover to the diamond planet for samples.

Kinda throw out the theory that aliens came to earth to harvest gold... (or lack of) if a planet size diamond is just floating around, i wouldnt be surprise a planet size gold is also doing the same thing....

Originally posted by randomname
trillions and trillions and trillions of carats of diamonds that would end all poverty on earth.

It is going to take alot more than just a bunch of shiny rocks to end poverty on this planet.
You can't eat or drink those rocks, and I dare say they aren't good builing material nor do they insulate very well so, housing is out.

No, what is going to end poverty on this planet isn't more shiny rocks or green paper, just simple love and compassion for your fellow man.

When service to others tips the scales and becomes more prominant than service to self on this planet then we will see change. What are you willing to do for me?

I mean, what IF we were able to rope that thing over to us?
What IF there were a planet of gold?
What IF we mined the dog piss out of em???

Then what?!?!

Then everyone has diamonds and gold?
OK.
Now what? Now I have shiny jewelry.Yippy!!!
I am hungry and my child has cancer but I have shiny rocks!!!

AGHHH,
I want off this planet sometimes.

reply to post by Screwed


Our civilization is screwed as long as wealth is defined by how much paper, digits in a database, and shiny things you possess.

Originally posted by Druscilla
I'm just wondering from a computational level, how much data a diamond processor that size could pipe.

An incomprehensible amount, if the whole planet could remain in a single, coherent, entangled state.

To give you an idea, even a quantum computer with 100 qubits, can manipulate a vector with more elements than the estimated number of particles in the universe. A planet-sized quantum computer would take that to 2^n, where n is a number with many, many zeros.

You'd either use it to factor numbers with more digits than you can write down before the Universe ends, perform lookups against massive unindexed datasets, or you could just use it to simulate reality.

reply to post by Legos


In fact, if large-scale quantum computing ever becomes practical i would half expect a planet-sized quantum-computer to just crash the universe, possibly with a stack overflow exception.