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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."
Gold and diamonds have industrial uses as conductors and abrasives. While having a large amount of either would depress the commodity markets (and send many speculators to the depths of dispair) it would bolster the industries that utilize these items for manufacturing.
Imagine if gold were cheaper than lead - we could market environmentally friendly "lead-free" ammunition. If we had access to diamond sheets large enough, perhaps we could construct windows out of it. Instead of copper wiring, we'd have gold wiring instead. Circuit boards would be plated with gold, and maybe we'd see the return of $20 gold coins that are actually worth $20.
What would REALLY be valuable would be catalytic elements like platinum or palladium. Bring back enough of those and whole new industries could be built around them...
Uh no... no diamond at the core of Jupiter... there is still some question about rocky, heavy metal, or metalic hydrogen at the core...
In any of those cases, the state of matter at jupiter's core would be pretty exotic stuff, even a diamond at those temperatures and pressures would flow like water...
And no, jupiter was never large enough to have sustained fusion, though it does emit a whole lotta heat and readio waves.
Genda Bendte
until the white dwarf cools off that is. Then it becomes a crystalline diamond core surrounded by rock.
It takes about ten billion years for a white dwarf (average) to cool off to the point of not being visible. The age of the universe is about 13-14 billion years old.
However, do not plan on going to the white dwarf to go diamond mining, as it is still quite hot, and it's gravity would squish you flat.
But eventually they will become dark cold diamond cinders.
But one interesting thing is that white dwarfs can accumulate material from companion stars over time. When this white dwarf obtains 1.4 solar mass it reaches the Chandrasekhar limit, and a type 1a supernova explosion occurs. You don't want to be around.
If you were thinking of collecting boken diamonds from the aftermath, think again.
Diamond undergoes catastrophic allotropic conversion conversion to graphite at 1800 C. This is exceeded a few million times in a supernova producing carbon ions.
So, the conclusion I draw from this -- the carbon in our bodies could have come from diamonds, having originated from a white dwarf that crystallized and later became a type 1a supernova
Correct me if I'm wrong, physicists.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
That's true, the majority of its mass is hydrogen. But you're forgetting just how friggin' massive Jupiter is. Even if only a tiny tiny fraction of a percent were a diamond, it'd still be huge!
Part of Clarke's explanation for this theory (in "2061", actually) explained that Jupiter's high gravity would cause the more massive molecules -- like methane, which Jupiter definitely has in quantity -- would sink through the atmosphere towards the core. And at the core, the intense pressures would separate the carbon from the hydrogen (in the methane), and the hydrogen would waft back up (being of lesser mass), while the carbon would stay in the core.
Think of it as being like a black hole, except without the extreme singularity -- instead of being compressed to a single point, it's being compressed into a diamond. (But it's not just the gravity doing this, it's also the intense atmospheric pressure of all the gasses sitting above the core, too.)