10 billion trillion trillion-carat diamond

[Vitter]

Astronomers spy 10 billion trillion trillion-carat diamond (http://sacbee.com/state_wire/story/8260120p-9190734c.html)
The Associated Press

If anyone's ever promised you the sun, the moon and the stars, tell 'em you'll settle for BPM 37093.

The heart of that burned-out star with the no-nonsense name is a sparkling diamond that weighs a staggering 10 billion trillion trillion carats. That's one followed by 34 zeros.

The hunk of celestial bling is an estimated 2,500 miles across, said Travis Metcalfe, of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

"You would need a jeweler's loupe the size of the sun to grade this diamond," said Metcalfe, who led the team that discovered the gem.

The diamond is a massive chunk of crystallized carbon that lies about 300 trillion miles from Earth, in the constellation Centaurus.

The galaxy's largest diamond is formally known as a white dwarf, or the hot core of a dead sun.

Astronomers have suspected for decades that white dwarfs crystallized, but only recently were able to verify the hypothesis.

A paper detailing the discovery has been submitted to The Astrophysical Journal Letters for publication.

[Khronos]

i wonder how much its worth

[UncleDynamite]

A massive diamond 300 trillion miles away...

Hmmmm....

If I build a great big starship, tow it back, and bring it into Earth's orbit, I could be rich! Like, insanely rich! Except by the time I get back, civilization will have probably died out, leaving Earth a barren hulk of rock devoid of any jeweler who could cash in the diamond. Even if there was, the massive amounts of diamond flooding the market would crash prices and I'll get something like, $13.20 for the whole thing. Plus, there would be the problem of a huge diamond causing gravitational chaos in orbit... meh.

[Febnon]

Indeed

[FlakMan]

celestial bling

[Setari]

Uncle D. i dont even think they make enough money for that "hunk of celestial bling."

[Spee]

Psh, who needs diamonds - Fnd me a hunk of celestial gold that I can melt down and plate completely random objects with, then attach to a necklace.


Like a dinner plate.

[Cyanide]

According to my google search, a 1 carat diamond of the lowest quality is worth about $189. So that diamond would be worth about 1.8919 x 10^36 dollars. Or

$18,919,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,00 0,000 if my calculations are correct. Somebody else could verify.

In short, if you put all the money on earth together, you still could not buy it. Literally.

[Retroactive]

cool...10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, 000 carats huh?

[Triggar]

Wonder how that'd look on my hand..... :D

[ZionsFire]

That would be some Valentine's Day gift.....:O

[Common]

Jennifer Lopez just bought it...

[Rayder]

Meh... The galaxy's largest diamond is formally known as a white dwarf, or the hot core of a dead sun. Retards. It's a dead star, not sun, and even if it was, you would capitalize "sun," because it is a name, not a group.

[Triggar]

(FYI: The sun is a star. It appears so much bigger than the others because it is the closest star in our galaxy.)

[Rayder]

That would be correct.

[Jaged]

If I could somehow reach that diamond, the best way to get rich would be to chip off smaller pieces and sell them on earth slowly, so as not to flood the market.

[Triggar]

You'd have to chip off enough pieces to make the trip worthwhile - and you have the issue of gravity and the vacuum of space to think about. Would you be able to chip pieces off?

Sidenote, imagine landing a space module on a giant diamond.

[Jaged]

Ok, get a giant space ship, and tow it closer to earth, but not close enough to mess up any orbits or anything. And then mine it and sell it.

That or just build a robot mining army and a teleporter, send them both to the diamond, have them mine it and teleport it back.

[Triggar]

But what if the robot army revolts, steals the diamonds for themselves, and decides to take over the world with their newfound wealth?

[Jaged]

The army doesn't have AI. I program them to do what I want and send instant radio waves to update their commands by sending the radio waves through the teleporter.

[Ait'al]

You would have to worry about disrupting the solar systems gravity with that thing. And a dimaond of what size at 1 carot is 189. That isnt right. You can get tiny diamonds that are about 2-3 mm accross at like 20 karots for less than that.

You guys realize this makes all the ancient people who beleived that stars were made of gems correct. They were all correct 5000-2000 years ago. I hope the other feilds of science get a clue and start cracking out the old books and start looking more closely at why they all thought that. They underestimate the reasoning behind all ancient culture enough now, anyways. They all had very real reasons for beleiving what they did outside of ther own myths. I hope to get to see it someday soon.(i personally think none of hte "myths" were for the reason some poeple think they are today.)

http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/previous/latest.html

http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/hotimage/ harvards pics. cool 8)

[UncleDynamite]

You guys realize this makes all the ancient people who beleived that stars were made of gems correct.

Uh, not really. This isn't a star that they're talking about, it's the dead remains of one (hence, the "dwarf" status). Stars are composed mostly of hydrogen and helium. Towards the center of the star, it gets so hot and pressurized that helium fuses into carbon. When the helium runs out, the star "dies" and its outer layers shed away. The carbon core is what remains, and in this case the carbon has crystalized into a diamond. For a star, I suppose you could say that its part diamond (the core), but it'll still be made mostly of H and He.

There are very large stars in which its hot and pressurized enough to fuse carbon into oxygen, then fuse oxygen into silicon, then silicon into iron, but these stars are the ones that usually go nova when they die.

[Rayder]

Ait, it's 2,000 - 5,000 years....

[Bighoss]

I bet debeers is already all over that.

[Seer]

A diamond that large is effectively worthless. If it existed in a way we could get it at, it would be as common as dirt. Well, not worthless, it would just depress the value of diamonds exponentially.

[Sputty]

I bet debeers is already all over that.
Yep, now all they need is some aliens to enslave. Not enough Africans to handle something that big

[Triggar]

There's always the Chinese....

[Ait'al]

NO shit dinamyte. They are refering to fucking stars that are going to turn into a diomand if this is true. There may very well be others that will then turn into rubies and other crystals based on hte stars makup. And Rayder, i meant 5000-2000 not 2000-5000.

[Sputty]

There's always the Chinese....
Good point

[Everay]

is a billion people enough?

http://www.iowastatedaily.com/vnews/display.v/ART/1998/05/26/3bf43e3e0d51a?in_archive=1

that better explains it.

[ViperGTS]

Just dont let any rappers here of this.

[Rarzo]

We would need one BIG PSU Fundraiser to afford a trip that far away...O_

[Dharkbayne]

2,500 miles across, I don't think that would disrupt any orbits, some smaller things might orbit around it though.

[Veteran]

There are plenty of times during the nova stage of stars that the entire surface of the star is gold, platinum and in the case of big stars, uranium.

That's why we have those elements on Earth.

[Rayder]

Do ya say so? Well, like we could harvest that even if we could get to them.

[SilverLord]

Plus, there would be the problem of a huge diamond causing gravitational chaos in orbit... meh.:indeed:

[Rayder]

To the gravitational thing... the force of gravity is about 6.67x10^(-11). To get the pull of gravity on an object, you would do this...

6.67x10^(-11) x Mass of object 1 (m1) x Mass of object 2 (m2)/distance^2

Let's use the Earth's pull on a 100 kg (220 lb) man.

The Earth has a mass of about 5.98x10^24, and a 100 kg man obviously has a mass of 100kg. The distance this man is from the center of Earth if he stands on the surface of the Earth, is about 6.38x10^6.

Using the formula stated above...

6.67x10^(-11) x 5.98x10^24 x 100 / (6.38x10^6)^2 = 979.9088059 (last number is probably rounded up 1)

Now, there's another number that you would divide 979.9088059 by, but I forgot it, and I've already done this, so someone google it up and finish for me.

[Dharkbayne]

**head explodes**

[Happy lil Elf]

Wouldn't the gravitational field on a diamond that's 2500 miles across be enough to kill any human? Of course assuming we had the technological capabilities to travel that far, we'd probably be able to overcome that :p

And a diamond of what size at 1 carot is 189. That isnt right. You can get tiny diamonds that are about 2-3 mm accross at like 20 karots for less than that.
Cool, find me some. And no, diamonique doesn't count. A 1c diamond ring, one that contains a high quality diamond anyways, is not cheap.

You guys realize this makes all the ancient people who beleived that stars were made of gems correct. They were all correct 5000-2000 years ago. I hope the other feilds of science get a clue and start cracking out the old books and start looking more closely at why they all thought that. They underestimate the reasoning behind all ancient culture enough now, anyways. They all had very real reasons for beleiving what they did outside of ther own myths. I hope to get to see it someday soon.(i personally think none of hte "myths" were for the reason some poeple think they are today.)

That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard you say, Ait. Tell me, do you think the sun revolves around the earth too? Or that the world is flat? Ancient knowledge is based for the most part on assumptions and "logic" that's shakier than California during an earthquake.

[Octavian]

What a great Valentine's Day present.

[Veteran]

Ancient knowledge is based for the most part on assumptions and "logic" that's shakier than California during an earthquake.

That's quite a generalization. Ancient people developed higher mathematics, navigation, medicine, art, etc. Without them, there would be no modern technology.

[Deadlock]

This brought up an interesting fact i learned today... Aluminum used to be worth more than gold before electricity was discovered... wonder what crashing the economy with that hudge diamond would in turn cause to be worth millions? (Im a silversmith by trade, this stuff gives me a big hardon)

[Rayder]

Cotton... cotton would go up for no apparent reason... or maybe if you felt like it, tungsten.

[Triggar]

I would make squirrel pelt the most valuable thing on Earth, if diamonds and platinum were as disposable as aluminium.

[Rayder]

What the hell is with your and squirrells?

[Triggar]

There's this tree outside the window to our apartment, and these squirrels love it. It's so fun to watch them go nuts and play with eachother on it.

Also, the squirrels on my campus rule. They're like pidgeons in that they'll come right up to you. You can see them hanging out on our outside dining tables, or passed out flat on the lid of a garbage can.

The day will come when I will own my own squirrel and call it "Niner".

[Rayder]

Take an airsoft gun, and shoot a squirrel that's standing on a branch... watch what happens.

[Happy lil Elf]

That's quite a generalization. Ancient people developed higher mathematics, navigation, medicine, art, etc. Without them, there would be no modern technology.Yes, Vet, and those are some of the things that modern science evolved out of. Saying suns were made of gems because both are sparkly leaves a bit to be desired in the field of solid logic though.

[Rayder]

Well... gems aren't sparkly, they just shine when under light.

[Rbstr]

That would be awsome to somehow get it here, mostly becsaue dimond has the highest tensile strenght of basicaly anyhting and we could do a ton of realy awsome used to be impossible things, like building towers all the way up to space stations with elevatoers and stuff.

And If you had diamond heatsikns in yout computer, it would run very cool.

The reason the dimonds for is becaus the white dwarf is running out of fuel and making heavier and heavier atoms all the time, it basicaly ends of carbon for some reason, and the heavy gravity and heat fore the heavier carbon atoms to the center whare they crystalize to to the high heat and pressure.

It the same thing that makes some scientists predict that there is a massive diamond in teh center of jupiter.

[Triggar]

My head just nearly exploded when I tried to invision a diamond society - with diamond towers, diamond fire hydrants, diamond toilets.... I love it.

On the more serious note, Rbstr has a good point - if we did manage to get that diamond into Earth safely, there is so much that we could improve by replacing standard materials with diamonds. Let's someone get on this, mama needs a 1.5 carat piece of loooove.