New
Scientist: Researchers at Swinburne University of
Technology in Melbourne, Australia, have detected a pulsar with
an orbiting object that may be composed of diamond. Using the
CSIRO Parkes
radio telescope in New South Wales, Matthew Bailes and
coworkers detected the pulsar in December 2009. From follow-up
observations taken with the Lovell radio telescope in the UK,
they surmise that the orbiting object has a mass comparable to
Jupiter’s but less than half its width. The extremely
fast rotation of the pulsar and the size and density of the
companion object led the researchers to conclude that the
object is all that's left of a star whittled down by the
pulsar. Because the core of a stripped-down star would be
mostly carbon, and because it would be under high pressure due
to its own gravity, they believe the carbon would
crystallize—most likely into diamond, much as carbon does
deep inside Earth. The researchers published their
results
yesterday in
Science.
