Diamond at heart of star outweighs any on Earth

Astronomers announced Friday that a white dwarf star they've been studying is a chunk of crystallized carbon that weighs 5 million trillion trillion pounds. That's the same as a diamond that is approximately 10 billion trillion trillion carats, or a one followed by 34 zeros.

Twinkle-twinkle indeed: An artist's conception of the diamond core of a dead white-dwarf star. Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

"It's the mother of all diamonds," said astronomer Travis Metcalfe, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. "Bill Gates and Donald Trump together couldn't begin to afford it."

The object, a burned out corpse of a star named BPM 37093, is about 50 light-years from in the constellation Centaurus. It is a mere 2,500 miles wide. It's coated with a thin layer of hydrogen and helium. Astronomers had long suspected the interiors of white dwarfs crystallized, but only recently did they determine it to be so. The star pulsates like a giant gong, and the researchers studied those pulsations -- like seismic waves inside Earth -- to figure out the carbon interior was solidified.

The biggest diamond on Earth is the 530-carat Star of Africa, part of the Crown Jewels of England. It was cut from a 3,100-carat gem, the biggest ever found.

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