Scientists discover diamond planet

Australian scientists say they have found an exotic planet that seems to be made of diamond racing around a tiny star in our galactic backyard.


"The evolutionary history and amazing density of the planet all suggest it is comprised of carbon -- i.e. a massive diamond orbiting a neutron star every two hours in an orbit so tight it would fit inside our own Sun," said Matthew Bailes of Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne.

Astronomers say the new planet is denser than all others spotted so far and consists largely of crystalline carbon which makes a large part of it diamond, Reuters reported.

"In terms of what it would look like, I don't know I could even speculate," said Ben Stappers of the University of Manchester. "I don't imagine that a picture of a very shiny object is what we're looking at here."

The planet is situated 4,000 light years away, or around an eighth of the way toward the center of the Milky Way from the Earth and is believed to be the remnant of a once-massive star that has lost its outer layers to the so-called pulsar star it orbits.

Pulsars are tiny, dead neutron stars that spin hundreds of times a second, emitting beams of radiation.

The beams emitted by the pulsar J1719-1438 around which the newly-found planet orbits regularly sweep the Earth and have been monitored by telescopes in Australia, Britain and Hawaii.

Scientists say the planet orbits its star every two hours and 10 minutes and is 20 times as dense as Jupiter.

According to the report published in the journal Science, the new planet is also likely to contain oxygen which might be more prevalent at the surface and increasingly rare toward the carbon-rich center.