Yale finds second diamond planet Astronomy has turned up a second diamond planet, and it’s a relative neighbor to the solar system – a mere 40 light-years distant, circling 55 Cancri. Unlike the diamond planet discovered by Australian astronomers last year, this one didn’t even need a pulsar’s gravity to give it the squeeze. It inherited its mostly-carbon …
This is very interesting and I really do enjoy reading about this new planet. Of the many planets in space, through the darkness, this planet stands among many we are on the brink of discovering! It is truly a discovery of scientific attainment, I hope to see more of these discoveries soon
I'm sure the combined brain power of el reg is enough for this question...
Why are planets apparently all so different? I recognise that distance from their star will make the general temperature and volatility of the planets different, but even in our own solar system we see widely varying chemical composition from the innermost to the outermost. Why, in the random spatterings across the universe, didn't each planet end up more or less the same chemically?
There, answer that.
Conjecture 1: It's a result of the way the solar systems form and evolve over time; denser elements tend to fall in towards the centre more, resulting in rocky planets nearer the sun and gas giants further out, perhaps? I've always envisaged it rather like shaking up muddy silt with water in a jam jar and leaving it to settle into layers, but jam jars don't generally have a thermonuclear furnace in the bottom so the model isn't perfect...
Conjecture 2: Because that's the way Jesus wants it to be.
Because stars are basically chemical element spewers. All precious metal and a lot more things higher up the periodic table than hydrogen and helium are naturalyy created when stars are either born or just exploded. I'm now asking you if a god would bother with the whole mucky process on day 4.
As the asker of the question, let's get the God thing out of the way. God didn't do it. We created him, not the other way round.
Stars do indeed spew heavy elements out all over the place, rather randomly it would appear. So why, in general, don't they end up randomly distributed? How is it that carbon in diamond form can appear, as far as we know, fairly sparsely across our solar system, yet apparently makes up most of a planet elsewhere? How come the inner rocky planets do have atmospheres but aren't gas giants themselves? There must be a reason (a natural one, god didn't do it, I've told you once) or a bunch or reasons, but I've never seen someone like Cox or Moore or Sagan explain it. Maybe they did and I missed it. I should watch more television.
If this planet is orbiting its host star in 18 hours how god damn fast is it going?! Is it fast enough to be affected by relativity, I mean GPS satellites are slightly so presumably it is?
I would try and work it out myself but the amount of swearing may give away the fact I'm not working...
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