男女羞羞视频在线观看,国产精品黄色免费,麻豆91在线视频,美女被羞羞免费软件下载,国产的一级片,亚洲熟色妇,天天操夜夜摸,一区二区三区在线电影

Astronomers discover diamond planet

Updated: 2011-08-27 07:56

By Ben Hirschler (China Daily)

  Comments() Print Mail Large Medium  Small 分享按鈕 0

Scientists say it's probably the remnant of a massive star

LONDON - Astronomers have spotted an exotic planet that seems to be made of diamond racing around a tiny star in our galactic backyard. The planet is far denser than any other known so far and consists largely of carbon. Because it is so dense, scientists believe the carbon must be crystalline, so a large part of this strange world will effectively be diamond.

Astronomers discover diamond planet

An exotic planet that seems to be made of diamond racing around a tiny star in our galactic backyard in an undated image courtesy of Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne. [Photo/Agencies]

"The evolutionary history and amazing density of the planet all suggest it is comprised of carbon - i.e. a massive diamond orbiting a neutron star every two hours in an orbit so tight it would fit inside our own Sun," said Matthew Bailes of Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne.

At 4,000 light years away, or around an eighth of the way toward the center of the Milky Way from the Earth, the planet is probably the remnant of a once-massive star that has lost its outer layers to the so-called pulsar star it orbits.

Pulsars are tiny, dead neutron stars that are only around 20 kilometers in diameter and spin hundreds of times a second, emitting beams of radiation.

In the case of pulsar J1719-1438, the beams regularly sweep the Earth and have been monitored by telescopes in Australia, Britain and Hawaii, allowing astronomers to detect modulations due to the gravitational pull of its unseen companion planet.

The measurements suggest the planet, which orbits its star every two hours and 10 minutes, has slightly more mass than Jupiter but is 20 times as dense, Bailes and colleagues reported in the journal Science on Thursday. In addition to carbon, the planet is also likely to contain oxygen, which may be more prevalent at the surface and is probably increasingly rare toward the carbon-rich center.

Its high density suggests lighter elements such as hydrogen and helium, which are the main constituents of gas giants like Jupiter, are not present.

Just what this weird diamond world is actually like close up, however, is a mystery.

"In terms of what it would look like, I don't know I could even speculate," said Ben Stappers of the University of Manchester. "I don't imagine that a picture of a very shiny object is what we're looking at here."

Reuters

Hot Topics

The European Central Bank (ECB) held a conference call late on Sunday ahead of the market opening, pledging the ECB will step in to buy eurozone bonds with efforts to forestall the euro zone's debt crisis from spreading.

主站蜘蛛池模板: 乌兰县| 和林格尔县| 姜堰市| 邛崃市| 临泽县| 梧州市| 西青区| 高青县| 基隆市| 柳河县| 武定县| 淮南市| 高阳县| 文登市| 通山县| 九龙坡区| 巴塘县| 环江| 镇平县| 富锦市| 万宁市| 图木舒克市| 沁源县| 宜章县| 井陉县| 浦北县| 运城市| 马关县| 卓尼县| 东乌珠穆沁旗| 五峰| 中西区| 黑水县| 泸西县| 新津县| 昌邑市| 平泉县| 海盐县| 班玛县| 绍兴市| 淮北市| 鲁甸县| 罗山县| 边坝县| 左云县| 宿松县| 休宁县| 神池县| 鄯善县| 巨鹿县| 岐山县| 泗水县| 博客| 沈丘县| 探索| 万载县| 馆陶县| 九龙坡区| 静海县| 宁德市| 卫辉市| 兴文县| 平遥县| 托里县| 甘孜| 潞西市| 东乡| 大姚县| 县级市| 安溪县| 门源| 枣庄市| 巴彦淖尔市| 郑州市| 成武县| 弥勒县| 板桥市| 衡水市| 巴彦县| 广德县| 呼伦贝尔市| 巴彦县|