Future generations of astronauts
could come back wealthy men the Yale scientists have detected a huge
‘super-Earth’ made of diamonds. The study estimates that at least a third of
the planet’s mass – the equivalent of about three times the mass of Earth – could
be diamond.
New researches have suggested the newly discovered planet has no water at all, and appears to be composed primarily of carbon (as graphite and diamond), iron, silicon carbide, and, possibly, some silicates.
Earth
weighs 5973600000000000000000000kg, and a kilo of reasonable quality diamonds
currently fetches sums of $50 million and above. It orbits a sun-like star 40
light years from Earth, so any mineral prospectors would have quite a journey
to stake their claim on its riches.
This planet is twice
as wide as Earth, and has a mass eight times greater. It is thought to be
covered in graphite – the material found in the ‘lead’ of pencils – and
diamonds.
“This is our first
glimpse of a rocky world with a fundamentally different chemistry from Earth,”
said lead researcher Nikku Madhusudhan, a Yale postdoctoral researcher in
physics and astronomy.
“The surface of this
planet is likely covered in graphite and diamond rather than water and
granite.”
The planet — called
55 Cancri e – is one of five planets orbiting a Sun-like star, 55 Cancri, that
is located 40 light-years from Earth yet visible to the unclad eye in the
constellation of Cancer.
The planet orbits at
hyper speed — its year lasts just 18 hours, in contrast to Earth’s 365 days. It
is also blazingly hot, with a temperature of about 3,900 degrees Fahrenheit,
researchers said, a far cry from a habitable world. The planet was first
observed transiting its star last year, allowing astronomers to measure its
radius for the first time.
This new
information, combined with the most recent estimate of its mass, allowed
Madhusudhan and colleagues to infer its chemical composition using models of
its interior.
The scientists
computed all possible combinations of elements and compounds that would yield
those specific characteristics.
“By contrast,
Earth’s interior is rich in oxygen, but extremely poor in carbon — less than a
part in thousand by mass,” says co-author and Yale geophysicist Kanani Lee.
“Stars are simple —
given a star’s mass and age, you know its basic structure and history,” said
David Spergel, professor of astronomy and chair of astrophysical sciences at
Princeton University, who is not a co-author of the study. “Planets are much
more complex. This ‘diamond-rich super-Earth’ is likely just one example of the
rich sets of discoveries that await us as we begin to explore planets around
nearby stars.”
In 2011, Madhusudhan
led the first discovery of a carbon-rich atmosphere in a distant gas giant
planet, opening the possibility of long-theorized carbon-rich rocky planets (or
“diamond planets”).
The new research
represents the first time that astronomers have identified a likely diamond
planet around a Sun-like star and specified its chemical make-up.
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