So it's more like moissanite planet then? Looks like diamond from a distance, but the closer you get, and the longer you look, the more apparent it becomes that it isn't, in fact, diamond but an imposter.
That 'DIAMOND SUPER EARTH' may actually be WORTHLESS ball of gas
A "diamond super Earth" discovered a year ago may not be anywhere near as valuable as previously suggested. A graduate student at the University of Arizona has examined data that appeared to point to the existence of a diamond-stuffed world circling 55 Cancri, a star which is 40 light-years away from Earth. Scientists at Yale …
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Thursday 10th October 2013 16:00 GMT LarsG
A moot observation
A planet that may or may not be made of diamonds 40 light years away....
By the time we develop the technology to get there diamonds will probably have no value anymore, the world will have been consumed by the Sun and if any human beings were lucky enough to have survived or moved on they will be more concerned about survival than making a dash to grab a hand full of stones.
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Thursday 10th October 2013 09:07 GMT James Micallef
Re: Worthless ball of gas eh
"may not be anywhere near as valuable as previously suggested"
erm... seeing that the likelihood of reaching / mining the diamond was and still is as close to zero as makes no difference, I would say that it is exactly as commercially valuable as it was before i.e. zero.
And I bet that scientifically it's at least as valuable to study a non-diamond planet as a diamond one
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Thursday 10th October 2013 22:02 GMT Anonymous Coward
@moosh - actually no it wouldn't. Diamonds are only expensive because the release of gem quality diamonds onto the market is heavily restricted. There's a reason why De Beers execs are persona non gratia in the US - they operate a market rigging cartel.
If that planet turned out to be real and exploitable - the most likely outcome is someone like De Beers would buy the rights and then leave it alone - either that or the planet itself would suffer what's known as 'a regrettable incident'.
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Thursday 10th October 2013 09:12 GMT Ragarath
Re: Fahrenheit?
Is there a El Reg unit for temperature?
That would be 162.8889 Degree Hiltons.
Please make sure to Bookmark El Reg's Standards Converter.
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This post has been deleted by its author
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Friday 11th October 2013 09:24 GMT Bunbury
Team?
"Johanna Teske, an astronomy PhD student, and her team "
What team? Despite naming three others, the link shows plenty of "I" but no "we".
Not entirely clear what the status of this research is; the suggestion in the link is that it is something of a work in progress and yet to be peer reviewed. It seems a bit unfair on the author to report this as fact at this stage.