The Galaxy's Largest Diamond

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Posted by michael on Friday February 13, 2004 @08:00PM from the you-pay-shipping dept.

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."

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Um...not quite by UPAAntilles · 2004-02-13 20:20 · Score: 5, Informative

It's a white dwarf, the diamond would be sorrounded by plasma and gas.
2010 : Odyssey Two by MichaelGCD · 2004-02-13 20:35 · Score: 5, Informative

I remember reading that in 2010: Odyssey Two. In the book, there's a diamond the size of earth at it's core.

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calculations (again) by maddh · 2004-02-13 20:56 · Score: 5, Informative

I was curious about if they could land on that to mine it (interstellar distances aside) what kinda gravity would be at the surface. so i did some simple physics calculation, double check my work.
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.
1. Re:calculations (again) by Hunzpunz · 2004-02-13 23:54 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  I'd readjust the calculation a little bit, it was talked about 10 million trillion trillion carats, not 5 million trillion trillion pounds... a carat is 1 carat, and therefore i'd adjust the result by dividing it by 1250 ((a pound / 0.2 grams)/2 (because he started with 5 billion... instead of 10...)).
  
  so we'll end with round about 3040.74 g's, if everything else is right, which i didn't check.
More reasonable units of measure by jms · 2004-02-13 21:00 · Score: 5, Informative

According to Google Calculator, this diamond has ~ 330,000 times the mass of the planet earth.
Re:ppfffttt by MillionthMonkey · 2004-02-13 22:22 · Score: 5, Informative

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.