kayshapero

In Tom Godwin's, "Mother of Invention", a party of explorers trapped on a planet with way too much of a good thing (diamonds - including diamond dust sucked into the drive mechanism of their ship, ruining it) had to invent a really big new way home. (You can find the story in "The Cold Equations" from Baen Books). I still don't quite believe the solution (or why the grit didn't get THEM for that matter), but I'm beginning to believe in the planet...

"Diamond" Planet Found; May Be Stripped Star

Exotic crystalline world orbits fast-spinning stellar corpse, study says

Andrew Fazekas

for National Geographic News

Published August 25, 2011

An exotic planet as dense as diamond has been found in the Milky Way, and astronomers think the world is a former star that got transformed by its orbital partner.

The odd planet was discovered orbiting what's known as a millisecond pulsar—a tiny, fast-spinning corpse of a massive star that died in a supernova.

Astronomers estimate that the newfound planet is 34,175 miles (55,000 kilometers) across, or about five times Earth's diameter.

In addition, "we are very confident it has a density about 18 times that of water," said study leader Matthew Bailes, an astronomer at the Swinburne Centre for Astrophysics & Supercomputing in Melbourne, Australia.

"This means it can't be made of gases like hydrogen and helium like most stars but [must be made of] heavier elements like carbon and oxygen, making it most likely crystalline in nature, like a diamond."

Partner Gave Pulsar a Superfast Spin

The new millisecond pulsar, dubbed PSR J1719-1438, lies about 4,000 light-years away in the southern constellation Serpens. Bailes and his team found the star during a pulsar survey using the radio telescope at Australia's Parkes Observatory.

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