a diamond is a chunk of coal that is made good under pressure

I was so excited when I read about this on le news: a team of astronomers have found a planet made of d.i.a.m.o.n.d! How awesome is that? OK, so it's not solid diamond or anything, it's made of diamond crystals, but that's still pretty neat, and it's not even that far away - 4,000 lightyears - still within the Milky Way.

The planet is super duper dense and is believed to have been a huge star until its companion pulsar (a tiny, dead neutron star with an intense magnetic field) ripped away it's outer layers, leaving only 0.01% of it remaining, which is now a white dwarf.

Despite it's reduced state, the planet is still five times the size of Earth, and has more mass than Jupiter, as well as being 20 times as dense. Jupiter has 317.8 times the mass of Earth, so diamond planet is darn heavy!

In celebration, I made a treasury of pretty sparkly things to say, "yay for diamonds!"

{click on image to be taken to the treasury}