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The Galaxy's Largest Diamond
unassimilatible writes "The Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics reports 'to impress your favorite lady this Valentine's Day, get her the galaxy's largest diamond.' A newly discovered cosmic diamond is a chunk of crystallized carbon 50 light-years from the Earth in the constellation Centaurus. It is 2,500 miles across and weighs 5 million trillion trillion pounds, which translates to approximately 10 billion trillion trillion carats, or a one followed by 34 zeros. A cheesy, unrealistic simulation is also available. AP has a story as well."
It's a white dwarf, the diamond would be sorrounded by plasma and gas.
I remember reading that in 2010: Odyssey Two. In the book, there's a diamond the size of earth at it's core.
hate titty pee colon slash slash
Diamonds -- Are they really worth the cost?.
Rank Presidents by th
But in time, the bottom will fall out. In 1943, Linde Chemical created the first synthetic sapphire. Now, you can buy 200mm sapphire bar stock. Big 16mm gem-quality sapphires are available for about $10. The same thing happened to rubies and emeralds.
They're just rocks, people.
Gravitatotional Force
Fg = G * m1 * m2 * r^-2
Gravitational Acceleration Fg/m2
Ag = G *m1 * r^-2
G = 6.67E-11
m1= 5 million trillion trillion lbs = 5 * 10^6 * 10^12 * 10^12 lbs= 5E30 lbs *(1kg/2.2lbs) = 2.26E30 kg
r = diameter of 2500mi/2 = 1250mi * (1609 m/mi) = 2011680 meters
Ag= 6.67E-11 * 2.26E30kg * (2011680m)^-2 = 37,249,159.4 m/s^2
Ag = (37,249,159.4 m/s^2)/(9.8 m/s^2)= 3,800,934.63 g's
3.8 million times earth gravity?
Unless there was some mistake in the way they described the mass (million billion trillion) that seems pretty rough right?
again correct me if i was wrong.
According to Google Calculator, this diamond has ~ 330,000 times the mass of the planet earth.
The poster is a well-known troll: look at his history. Please mod the jerk into oblivion.
Get a photocopy of Astrophysical Journal Letters from your local library (via interlibrary loan if they don't carry it) and don't be such a snob.
A "snob"? A little skepticism is warranted here.
White dwarfs have densities in the ballpark of one million grams per cc. Have we ever compressed any matter on earth at all to a density of 1 million grams per cc? Do you seriously think that carbon, which as diamond has an invariant density of 3.51 g/cc, would still exist in something resembling its familiar form at a density of 1 million g/cc? As a covalently bonded sp3 tetrahedral diamond lattice?
The internuclear spacing of carbon nuclei in a carbon dwarf is about 1% of what it is in an ordinary diamond. It may be made of carbon, but this is not diamond. I doubt it's even diamondlike. It's something else.
http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/astro-ph/0402046
Second, nowhere in the paper is there any mention of "diamond". Crystallized carbon can also be in graphite form, so it might actually be a very large pencil lead...
In the rest of the World:
million: 6 zeroes
milliard: 9 zeroes
billion: 12
billiard: 15
trillion: 18
trilliard: 21
quadrillion: 24
quintillion: 30
hexillion or sexillion: 36
septillion: 42
octillion: 48
nonillion: 54
decillion: 60
undecillion: 66
duodecillion: 72
A duodecillion is about as big as you get, roughly being the number of particles in the galaxy. You could keep on counting if you liked, the system is a derivative of roman numerals (with some greek for flavour).
In the 17th century the French decided to get rid of all the "iard"'s and have steps of 3 zeroes instead of 6 between the "ion"'s. The USA adopted this system.
The Brittish kept the original system, and in 1948 the French reverted to the "iard" system, this leaving the USA as the only country ussing a different system, giving rise to much misunderstanding and potential problems like space probes hitting Mars.
Adriaan Renting.
RogerWilco the Adventurous Janitor
The lifetime of the star (and the elements that it ends up fusing to sustain that lifetime) are determined only by the initial mass of the star. Most stars are low mass stars (it's easier to form smaller clumps of gas), and these stars take a long time to run out of their hydrogen supply (in fact the least massive of these still haven't run out, and won't for several billion years).
As stars run out of hydrogen, they start fusing other elements present in their cores. This takes them through different stages of stellar evolution (red giant, horizontal branch stars, assymptotic branch stars, etc.) They continue to gain energy from this process until they reach iron. When these stars fuse elements heavier than iron, they don't actually get a net energy output from the reaction and thus their pressure source (fusion) cannot sustain the equilibrium against the gravitational force that constantly tries to collapse them. This is when a supernovae event occurs. As the star collapses under its own gravitation, the core rapidly fuses anything it can as the density increases. This is why the previous poster is right in saying that the main source for elements heavier than iron in the universe is supernovae.
I drink to prepare for a fight; tonight I'm very prepared. -Soda Popinksi
http://www.gemesis.com/home.htm
They're selling yellow diamonds. I thought the Russians had a process years ago for adding some metal to the stew that hoovered up the nitrogen that caused the yellow color, producing clear diamonds.
I'm with the Slashdotter who said that even at the same price, he'd prefer to own or give a jewel embodying human science, engineering, ingenuity and cooperation rather than one dug out of the ground in an armed camp. My wife feels the same way. If I had to have a natural diamond I'd wait for a Martian one.