Hard Core
From USATODAY.com,
Posted 2/16/2004 11:16 PM
Diamond at heart of star
outweighs any on Earth
Astronomers announced Friday that a white dwarf star they’ve been studying is a chunk of crystallized carbon that weighs 5 million trillion trillion pounds. That’s the same as a diamond that is approximately 10 billion trillion trillion carats, or a one followed by 34 zeros.
 |
Twinkle-twinkle indeed: An artist’s conception of the diamond core of a dead white-dwarf star. Harvard-Smithsonian |
“It’s the mother of all diamonds,” said astronomer Travis Metcalfe, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics….
The biggest diamond on Earth is the 530-carat Star of Africa, part of the Crown Jewels of England. It was cut from a 3,100-carat gem*, the biggest ever found.
The gooey candy coating around that star-sized diamond sure looks yummy. But don’t bite in too hard…
Ok, so if it takes a 3100 carat gem to make a 530 carat polished diamond, how much of the star would have to be chipped away from a 2500-mile wide gem to yield something Zsa Zsa Gabor can wear around her neck?
Comment by HomerTheBrave — Wednesday, February 18, 2004 @ 2:58 am
Actually I think the Star of Africa is in the British Crown Jewels, not the English ones. It is in the Royal Sceptre which was originally made for Charles the Second in 1661 after the union of the English and Scottish crowns (in 1601) which brought about “Great Britain”. The Star of Africa was added in the early years of the twentieth century.
Comment by andrewhoyle — Wednesday, February 18, 2004 @ 4:46 am