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."

Comments

In other news...

[Alizarin Erythrosin]

DeBeers has announced their official entry into the X-prize competition...

closer

[kyshtock]

Wasn't there a theory that the core of Jupiter was diamond?

Re:closer

[Genda]

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

Re:closer

[DroopyStonx]

Heavy Metal indeed.

It's rumored that GWAR originally came from the core of Jupiter before the Master sent them, the Scumdogs of the Universe, to an iceberg in Antactica.

DeBeers

[stibles]

Sadly DeBeers has already posted one poor volunteer from South Africa to sit on it until it gets close enough to rope in.

Oh my God...

[meeotch]

...it's full of Retsyn!

mitch

thank god for that high res pic

[werdnapk]

Is the high resolution image for the women?

Just in time for Valentine's Day

[antispamist]

Great, now I have to haul my ass all the way to where?

This getting married thing is getting more and more complicated each year.

Re:Just in time for Valentine's Day

[Lane.exe]

You get married each year? Tough break, bro.

ppfffttt

[phlegmofdiscontent]

When the hell are news outlets going to hire writers that at least understand science somewhat and won't dumb it down so far that it becomes just another fluff story next to the one about the cute puppies? Granted, it's cool that scientists can confirm a hunk of crystallized carbon that large, but give me a friggin break....

Re:ppfffttt

[azcoffeehabit]

yeah seriously, there has to be more to say about this discovery then "you couldnt wear it as a ring" wtf is that about. You would think a group with the name The Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics would have a bit more of a profound view on the crystalization(sp?) of a star, than "bill gates couldn't afford it". Oh well, lets hope for a more scientific update on this.

Re:ppfffttt

[MillionthMonkey]

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.

Re:ppfffttt

[MillionthMonkey]

Probably. When a supercolliders collide two gold nuclei, the density gets pretty damned high, but unfortunately I can't seem to Google any solid numbers up. I'd strongly suspect that the density gets into that range.

Oh in those collisions the density is much much higher- maybe a factor of a thousand times higher, approaching neutron star density. But in fact ALL nuclei have comparable density and as you point out we have no macroscopic quantity of this stuff.

White dwarfs are supported by degenerate electron pressure. So many electrons are crammed into such a small space that the entire star has become something like one giant atom with lots of nuclei in it. All low energy electron quantum states are occupied by electrons. Except at the very highest energy levels near the Fermi energy, which are adjacent to unoccupied levels immediately above, giving the electrons in those states a little freedom of movement.

A white dwarf has no internal energy source- it spends the rest of its life cooling down into a cinder. Since the star is hot (surface temps are commonly 100000 K) there is some spillover into higher energy levels. But as the star cools down, they gradually settle down and fill all available levels below the Fermi energy.

The nuclei, OTOH, still have plenty of room. They are still bouncing around and having collisions in the star like a classical gas because they still have so many unoccupied quantum states to explore. There probably isn't much difference between a carbon-dominated white dwarf and a helium-dominated one, since the behavior of both is mostly determined by what the electrons are doing. The article says that by studying pulsations of the star, they determined that the interior has "solidified to form the galaxy's largest diamond". It leaves out some details. What is "solidifying"? The electrons or the embedded nuclei? It could mean a bunch of things. "Diamond" is not really one of them, though. This would be a different sort of diamond than you are used to.

When you hear an astrophysicist claiming that he has found a "girl's best friend" in space, always be skeptical. These physicists know little about what girls really want.

Quite the sparkle?

[loyalsonofrutgers]

My understanding is that the vast majority of a diamond's "sparkle" is the result of careful cutting and controlling where the light enters the diamond. Slicing through an otherwise uncut diamond would not be too impressive, I'd imagine. Especially considering the lack of a strong light source.

Maybe a more worthwhile story would be on the fact that the entire diamond industry is created by incredibly strict control of the supply, which is kept artificially low to dramatically inflate price. If people knew, and accepted, the truth this wouldn't be considered that much more special than the fact that some other planets are just big, big versions of rocks. Gasp!

Re:Quite the sparkle?

[ClubStew]

Actually, the sad thing is that most people seem to already know this but no one does / can do (?) anything to stop them. DeBeers, after all, pretty much controls the majority of diamonds on this planet.

To give DeBeers the slap in the face they need, maybe we should harvest this white dwarf. Heck, just tell Liz Taylor about this and she'll get that "sparkly" diamond almost half as big as she is in no time!

Re:Quite the sparkle?

[Animats]

Yeah, and Gemesys, the new synthetic diamond gem manufacturer, caved in to deBeers and are now engraving "Gemesis created" and a serial number on each stone.

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.

Woo.

[Renraku]

Us guys will be in seriously deep shit with our signifigant others if someone gives that to his signifigant other.

Re:Woo.

[Trillan]

Well, if you stop reading slashdot maybe your computer won't notice. :)

Formation

[whereiswaldo]

Did this diamond form based on the same principles as diamonds here on Earth? I thought coal had to be very highly compressed for ages before it became a diamond. Not so?

Re:Formation

[zokrath]

All it takes is blue spandex, a cape, and a wry grin given to an amazed coal worker.

Re:Formation

[MachDelta]

Carbon + Heat + Pressure = Diamond

So maybe its a chunk of a planet that got creamed by a really big rock.

Or, more likely, its a rejected engagement ring on some faraway planet.
Female Alien: Only 10 billion trillion trillion carats?! You OBVIOUSLY don't love me that much if thats all you can afford! Throw it into space, I don't want it!! *stomps off*

Re:Formation

[Xeriar]

Sort of. Stars will fuse elements into heavier and heavier elements, up to iron (since making heavier elements actually takes energy, any larger atoms are made in negligable quantities outside of supernovas).

Anyway, my (educated) guess would be that this given star had enough mass to fuse elements up to carbon, but not further - not enough to sustain its continued existance as a 'star', anyway.

At least, I'm inferring from the article that this star is fast becoming a 'black dwarf' - I could be wrong and this is just a white dwarf in its carbon stage, but by that measure there would certainly be far, far larger diamonds out there (and in great numbers).

Re:Formation

[zabieru]

Well, that's actually a myth. They won't fuse all the way to iron normally... Mostly just to carbon, a little higher in some very hot or very unusual stars, but generally the limit is carbon. Yes, theoretically fusing higher elements produces a bit of energy, but for reasons I don't entirely understand it doesn't actually happen. Most everything higher than carbon comes from supernovas. Novas and near-nova stars produce carbon and I think lithium. Regular stars produce pretty much just helium. If you want more, ask a real physicist. I ain't one.

Re:Formation

[GreenPhreak]

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.

valuables in space

[jjeffries]

I wonder if these kinds of discoveries could get otherwise uninterested parties into the space biz. Plenty of scenerios have us mining the moon for oxygen, fuel, etc, in order to survive up there, but what about other minerals/precious stones? If a huge chunk of [gold|platinium|unobtainium] were found on the moon, would it be cost effective to mine it and send it back to earth?

I'm sure there will be other such finds. This huge diamond probably doesn't even scratch the surface. (ha!)

on closer inspection

[mattkime]

on closer inspection it is revealed to be cubic zirconium which drastically reduces it value at the local pawn shop.

Numbers

[Anonymous Coward]

Phrases like '5 million trillion trillion" are silly. They should put the number's real name, write it out in digits, and-or use scientific notation (or a variant like C-style "e notation"). It ticks me off -- the magnitude is already so large that it's incredibly hard to visualize, so they should put it in the clearest format possible. Do people say "there are sixty hundred hundred hundred hundred people alive on earth"? No, of course not, they say "six billion" or "6,000,000,000". If the people printing this assume that no one knows the words for numbers above a trillion, they could at least use the semi-easily-parsed "followed by n zeros" format consistently.

Re:Numbers

[crabpeople]

" They should put the number's real name"

well i see they took the same amount of time and effort as you did. do you actually know what a number with 34 zeros behind it is called??
no? well then. shut the fuck up - it is in the clearest possible format for most people.

oh and i did bother to google for it and the first result tells me that it is 10 decilion to americans, or 10 000 quintillion to the rest of the world.

dont just bitch, actually try and learn something - its not hard.

Re:Numbers

[concepthouse]

At least the journalist on this piece didn't tell us how much the star weighed using the IEEE international standard of Volkswagen Beetles.

Re:Numbers

[RogerWilco]

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.

Re:Numbers

[Ben Hutchings]

Britain adopted the American system a while ago.

Wouldn't matter

[SavannahLion]

It wouldn't matter if someone went up and brought the diamond back. As soon as you send it to the jewelers to be mapped and evaluated, they'll just swap it out for another, lesser quality, diamond without you even knowing.

I say leave it in place. We could shave off the first 30 miles of top layer and shine a giant laser at it for the largest intergalactic network ever known to man. Since it would take light 50 years to travel to the planet, Half-Life 2 should be just about ready to play by then.

Um...not quite

[UPAAntilles]

It's a white dwarf, the diamond would be sorrounded by plasma and gas.

Re:Um...not quite

[Jebediah21]

Heh. I don't even worry... 50 light years a way is a big enough barrier to me. Might as well start buying coal.

Re:Um...not quite

[ktanmay]

Yes, and add to that all the density and intense gravitational pull and we would probably do better here on earth to synthesize diamonds.
50 light years is pretty close, wonder if the early reptiles may have witnessed the nova explosion, in fact it would be interesting to find out if it had any effect on life here on earth.

Re:Um...not quite

[eclectro]

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.

...galaxy's largest diamond.

[AltGrendel]

So far.

I hear that Tau Ceti is bragging that they bought a larger one.

But I'll bet it's not flawless

[The_Steel_General]

Everyone remember, carat is only one of the Four C's. You need to consider the color (it was only blue-white while it was burning) the clarity (probably easy to see some flaws if you got close enough) and the cut (currently round but not brilliant, I suspect)

So, don't overpay for it, no matter what the salesman says about size mattering...

TSG

Weird Shit from Outer Space we'd like to see...

[heironymouscoward]

- The universe's largest collection of AOL CDs, approximately a terragoogle of them circling Saturn in the form of one of its rings. Results of failed marketing campaign circa 2501ad.

- A twenty-billion tonne meteor shaped exactly like the Hand of God, heading straight for Ur^h^h the planet Earth.

- Life on Mars, complete with funky trance tunes and dayglo noserings.

- A bong the size of NYC, containing twenty billion tonnes of a material that under examination appears to be chemically identical to Tunisian purple haze. Said bong is orbiting the Sun quite close to Mars and already the petition to send a manned mission to Mars has collected five hundred and thirty million signatures. Most of them say, "send me, send me!" Others just say, "Dude, that's too much!"

- A radio beacon embedded in the heart of a small black rock circling one of Pluto's moon. After the rock is detected and retrieved in 2032 at incredible expense, and cracked open following ten years of drilling, it is found to contain a copy of MAD Magazine from circa 1972 and a small piece of paper with the words "regular delivery to this address, please" on it.

- The discovery, in a deep crater on Mars, of an underground passage leading to a huge room filled with silent, brooding machines. After long study and careful analysis of the patterns and markings, we activate one of the machines. Immediately the whole room comes to life and a small black hole appears in its center. The Martian surface starts to slide into the black hole, then the entire planet, and finally the whole Solar System. A team of two plutonaughts watch the scene from the far boundaries of the Plutonian orbit, and as the last specks are absorbed into the now huge and pulsating black hole, they read, in huge flashing letters, the text "ZIPPING COMPLETE. NOW REFORMATTING MEDIA... 1% COMPLETE, PLEASE WAIT."

I'm reaching high up

[fractaltiger]

This puts another spin on the phrase "reaching the stars for HER" right?

2010 : Odyssey Two

[MichaelGCD]

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

Re:2010 : Odyssey Two

[OverlordQ]

Damn that must of been a big book then.

10 billion trillion trillion???

[fafalone]

Why must people write numbers like that? It's unfathomable anyway so just write the proper name (10 decillion in the US system) instead of obnoxious "billion trillion billion mllion" nonsense. Writing 10 billion trillion trillion doesn't help people understand it better, it just annoys those who know how to correctly name extremely large numbers.

Slashdot has already run that story

[Texas Rose on Lava L]

Diamonds -- Are they really worth the cost?.

Valentines Day?

[fmlug.org]

Yes but can fedex or UPS deliver it for Valentines day, any geek could get laid with one of these.

Re:The economy of large extraterrestrial finds?

[silentbozo]

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...

calculations (again)

[maddh]

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.

Re:calculations (again)

[Hunzpunz]

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.

Beware

[Zork the Almighty]

It's a conflict diamond - from a war a long, long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away.

More reasonable units of measure

[jms]

According to Google Calculator, this diamond has ~ 330,000 times the mass of the planet earth.

Well well

[mog007]

I bet this is going to piss off DeBeers to no end, but...

I for one, welcome our new diamond overlords.

Giant Diamond Asteroid on crash course with earth

[ArcticPuppy]

..Women worldwide ambigous...

Same thing here!

[Eric_Cartman_South_P]

getting it out would require us to blow through 30 miles of very hard rock.

For my girlfriend to get her diamond gift from me, she had to do the same.

Blow...very hard rock...

Re:Same thing here!

[The Clockwork Troll]

Mine did it for a pearl necklace, I guess I got off cheap.

and now...

[DotQuantum]

... and now to make [the 14th] it complete, where is the /. article about the largest chocolate in the galaxy ?!

Comics

[Flyboy Connor]

Sounds like this would have an irresistable attraction on Scrooge McDuck.

Moderators, come on!

[Sara Chan]

Moderators, the link in the parent post has nothing to do with the diamond or the story--it's about another topic entirely. Check the link to see.

The poster is a well-known troll: look at his history. Please mod the jerk into oblivion.

space diamonds?

[axxackall]

If it exists in the Universe as a whole, it can exist also in pieces. There could be many reasons why another big diamond would be broken into millions of smaller (but still huge) pieces.

We know (we think we know) that there is a lot of dark matter between star ssystems and between galaxies. No need to go that far - there is a belt of cold rocks outside of Pluto. Who knows, maybe some of those rocks are broken pieces of one of such diamond star.

Now, it's a matter of time that they will discover of proof of such diamond rocks there and begin hunting for them. Can it stimulate investors to space industry?

Not necessarily diamond

[doru]

First of all, the preprint is actually at :

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...

why it's complicated

[tid242]

You get married each year? Tough break, bro.

That's why it's so complicated. You think having more than 1 girlfriend is difficult to swing? - better not try the "another wife every year" thing.

-tid242

Re:Largest diamond?

[JaredOfEuropa]

..diamond would be as cheap as sand... Diamonds already are worth about as much as sand, except that de Beers has pretty much all of them, and they charge what they like...

Dammit!

[Mistshadow2k4]

My husband only got me a 120 gig external hard drive for Valentine's Day! What a gyp!

sell it on ebay!

[drago]

Hey, has anybody thought about selling the thing on ebay? Auction starting at $1, self-collectors only ;-)

Gold reserves non-issue

[tjstork]

World currency markets are not based on gold standards anymore. There's just not enough gold to go around to capture the economic value being traded in today's electronic money.

If the world were flooded with gold, industrialized nations would use it as a resource in producing consumer goods. We would have gold everything, but, the world markets would remain intact.

Re:Bugus science at it again

[flewp]

Can someone please tell me how a huge chunk of carbon (even one that big) can be detected from 50 light-years away?

Jealousy. If there's a bigger diamond out there, someone's girlfriend/wife is sure to find out/know about it. "Hrmph. Well, I guess it's nice, but I hear Centaraus has a 10 billion trillion trillion carat diamond!"

Re:someone should check their sources

[MinutiaeMan]

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.)

in a galaxy far, far away.

[Fubar411]

Anyone who knows diamonds would know they look like a friggin light colored rock. The facets shown in the diagram are a result of careful cutting and polishing. Something that doesn't happen in a galaxy far far away.

Corrected URL

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

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.

Just think of the economical implications

[gotr00t]

However, don't forget that despite the fact that most of the world is off the gold standard, gold is still used to stabilize the currency. Out of all the things that money could be backed by, a precious mineral like gold is the most stable because the amount in the world is fixed.

If you introduce so much gold into the world that its as abundant as lead, then there would need to be a new rare mineral to back currency. If this was to happen, every currency would be worthless, and so would gold. It would be just like the massive inflation Germany suffered in the 1920's... imagine pushing cartloads of gold to buy one loaf of bread.