Astronomers find diamond planet spinning in space
by Mike Swain, Daily Mirror 26/08/2011
Astronomers believe they have discovered a planet made purely from diamond.
=================================================The sparkling world 4,000 light years away is 60,000 kilometres in diameter, five times that of the Earth, and is thought to be all that remains of a once-massive star which collapsed and was crunched down into crystalline.
Dr Benjamin Stappers of the University of Manchester said: “We have never seen anything like this before.
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“Producing such exotic planets is the exception rather than the rule, and requires special circumstances.”
The planet orbits a tiny but super-hot neutron star just 20 kilometres across but with a mass 1.4 times that of our Sun. This powerful, spinning star is known as a pulsar, which sends radio waves over Earth – where radio telescopes in Australia, Hawaii and Jodrell Bank near Manchester detected patterns proving the presence of the planet.
The team led by astronomers in Melbourne also worked out the planet’s size and structure from the waves and speed at which it orbits the star – every two hours and 10 minutes.
Their findings were published in the journal Science.
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