Confirming what the Beatles always knew, astronomers have actually found a diamond in the sky - directly above Australia. It is the biggest known diamond in the universe, in fact.
According to American astronomers at the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics, a white dwarf star in the constellation of Centaurus, next to the Southern Cross, has been found to have a 3000-kilometre-wide core of crystallised carbon, or diamond.
It weighs 2.27 thousand trillion trillion tonnes - that's 10 billion trillion trillion carats, or a 1 followed by 34 zeroes. The biggest earthly jewel is one of the British crown jewels, the 530-carat Star of Africa.
However, this cosmic jewel is hidden beneath a layer of hydrogen and helium gases, with the diamond core making up between 50 and 90 per cent of its mass. "It's the mother of all diamonds," said astronomer Travis Metcalfe, who led the team of researchers that studied the star.
"Some people refer to it as Lucy, in a tribute to the Beatles song Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds."
Known officially as BPM 37093, the star confirms a theory, first raised in the early 1960s, that cool white dwarfs should have a diamond core. -- The Age (2004)
In tangentially related news,
Miners in South Africa claim they have unearthed the biggest diamond in the world.
The giant 7,000 carat jewel is said to be the size of a coconut and worth at least £15million, reports the Daily Mirror.
Has DeBeers already claimed BPM 37093? If not, they better. A diamond that size should drive down the price of diamonds to the equivalent of gravel filler.
Posted by: Hoodlumman | August 30, 2007 at 08:02 AM
No they haven't a guy by the name of Frank Speener has.
http://frankspeener.com/proclamation.htm
Posted by: Captain Chris sTc | September 02, 2007 at 04:00 PM
No they haven't a guy by the name of Frank Speener has.
http://frankspeener.com/proclamation.htm
Posted by: Captain Chris sTc | September 02, 2007 at 04:00 PM