It was once a popular myth that the stars in the night sky were made of diamonds. While this obviously isn’t true, this doesn’t mean diamonds can’t be found far beyond the skies, and it wasn’t that long ago that a huge diamond was found in space.
Travis Metcalfe, an astronomer from Harvard Smithsonian Centre for astrophysics, was part of a team that discovered an enormous 10 billion trillion trillion carat diamond. According to universetoday.com, the diamond was formed through some crystallised carbon, and it measures 2,500 miles in diameter; the diamond has been estimated at five billion trillion trillion pounds in weight.
The team of researchers say it was originally a white dwarf – the red hot centre of a star that is left once the star has utilised all of its nuclear power and eventually dies. The diamond goes by the official name of BPM 37093, but unofficially it was dubbed ‘Lucy’. ‘Lucy’ is said to be billions of years old; it is roughly the same size of this Earth, which gives you a good idea of the scale of it.
However, this isn’t the only time the diamonds have been associated with space. In 2008, a meteorite crashed to the ground in the deserts of Sudan. When it was examined, it was found that diamonds were contained within it. While this is often the case, this time is was unusual because the diamonds were so much larger than the ones that have previously been discovered.
The researchers involved believe that this is because these diamonds were formed in a different way. The scientists have a theory that the diamonds were created a long time ago before this solar system was fully established.
If this theory is correct, then it is possible that these diamonds were part of a ‘planetesimal’, which is basically a small rock that is not considered large enough to be a planet.
Details of this fascinating discovery were heavily reported, and it proves that there is so much more to be discovered when it comes to planetary exploration.