2023-06-16 10:06:51
Astronomy
A planet turns into a giant diamond
A white dwarf 104 light-years from Earth is crystallizing into a gigantic gemstone. But it will take time.
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A representation of a white dwarf transforming into a diamond.
Université de Warwick/Mark Garlick
A white dwarf is a sun that has burned most of its energy and collapsed in on itself. As it cools, if the core of this star is composed mainly of metallic oxygen and carbon, the star will transform into a gigantic diamond.
But this process takes time. A lot of time: a quadrillion years, or 1000X1000 billion years. Our universe is only 13.6 billion years old, so we’re not about to see a diamond in the sky, as the Beatles sang.
A star 4.2 billion years old
And yet. Researchers believe they have spotted a white dwarf that started this transformation, says LiveScience. The star HD 190412 C is 104 light-years away in a four-star system called HD 190412. Its temperature of 6300°C places it in the range of crystallizing white dwarfs. It is approximately 4.2 billion years old.
By modeling all the information at their disposal, including the amount of metal in its core, the scientists were able to confirm that they had before their eyes the first discovered case of a white dwarf crystallizing and whose age is known. In their article published on arXivthe researchers point out that such systems could be common and that we should probably soon find other white dwarfs in the process of becoming diamonds.
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