A Planet of Diamond

A big shout out to my student Areej in 6D, who brought me in a cool news clipping about a planet (we think might be made out) of Diamond.

(A note to my other students: I love this kind of stuff; if you find anything interesting and science-related, please bring me in the clipping or link.)

Now, back to diamonds…

From Discovery News (This Diamond Will Last Forever):

Astronomers have found the remains of a once-massive star, now transformed into a solid diamond five times bigger than Earth.

The object circles a pulsing companion star about 4,000 light years from Earth in the constellation Serpens (The Snake), which lies about one-eighth of the way toward the center of the Milky Way galaxy.

Here’s an artists conception of the planet:

You can click on the link above to read the entire article online.

In related news, Neptune might have diamond oceans.

Astronomy This’n'that

A few things astronomical have been hitting the news and the blogs lately. If you are interested in this kind of thing (because, like, you might be taking an astronomy course, after all…) feel free to click.

(It’s free!)

Astronomers find the smallest black hole (courtesy: the Universe Today)

Black holes seem to have no upper limit; some weigh in at hundreds of millions of times the mass of the Sun. But how small can they be? Astronomers have discovered what they think is the least massive black hole ever seen, with a mere 3.8 times the mass of the Sun, and a diameter of only 25 km (15 miles) across.

Saturn’s rings: now you see them, soon you won’t (courtesy: Astronomy Today)

What first comes to mind when you hear the name Saturn? Rings, right? If the rings are what you want to view, you should do it soon. In September of next year you won’t see them, at least for awhile.

Astronomers find baby planet (courtesy: Scienceblog)

Scottish astronomers have found a baby planet still in the stages of forming and encased within a ‘womb’ of gas.

The finding provides a unique view of how planets take shape, because the supporting images also shows the womb-like parent disk material from which the new planet formed. The ‘protoplanet’, called HL Tau b after its parent star HL Tau, could be as young as a few hundred years old.