Where diamonds are an expensive luxury on this planet, diamonds on planet “55 Cancri e” would be as cheap as dirt… if a jeweler existed on the martian rock, of course.
Astronomers discovered a planet orbiting a star that is visible to the naked eye in the Cancer constellation composed mostly of diamond. It’s twice the size of Earth and eight times the mass. Whoa. The diamond planet, discovered by a US-Franco research team, is so close to it’s star that it’s year is only 18 hours and has a surface temperature of 3,900 degree Fahrenheit.
“The surface of this planet is likely covered in graphite and diamond rather than water and granite,” said Nikku Madhusudhan, the Yale researcher whose findings are due to be published in the journal Astrophysical Journal Letters.”This is our first glimpse of a rocky world with a fundamentally different chemistry from Earth.”
A diamond-like planet has been spotted before, but this is the first time one has been observed orbiting around star similar to our sun and studied in such great detail.