A recent report about the latest astronomical discovery looks like a pretty mediocre piece of science fiction, beginning mid-nineteenth century. Or like a fairy tale. Nevertheless, it seems that the "planet-diamond" exists in reality.
Members of an international team of astronomers led by Professor Matthew Beylzom of Svinbernskogo University of Technology in Australia, reported the discovery of the pulsar J1719-1438, which is located at 4000 light years from our solar system, a fairly large and very dense satellite has a mass slightly smaller than Jupiter.
Planet-diamond ... But the planet is this?
Like all pulsars, this is a neutron star massive enough to form after a black hole.
This refers to the millisecond pulsar subtype, the period of its circulation is 5.7 ms. It is believed that these pulsars are rotating more slowly initially and accelerated due to the absorption of matter from a companion object.
The studies of the pulsar was found in his companion, which has much less mass, but has a high average density of 23 g / cm 3 . Apparently, once J1719-1438 b represented the kind of white dwarf star.
Could now be, if not a "but": the object of a companion orbiting the pulsar every 2 hours at a distance of only 600 thousand kilometers, that is only a half times farther than the Moon orbits the Earth.
All this means that any "upper" layers of material stripped from the object (and consumed) the pulsar. Under assumptions (but it's just guesses!) Astronomers discovered an object, it must consist mainly of oxygen and carbon predominantly, but its density indicates that the carbon should be in the crystalline state (the density of diamond in the middle of 3,47-3 55 g/cm3).
That is around the pulsar J1719-1438 with frightening speed rushes giant diamond.
Too, of course, beautiful to be true. Also not clear whether it is possible to call this object in the strict sense of the planet?
Although officially recognized planetoobrazovaniya theory does not exist, the most popular involves the formation of planets from the same gas and dust accumulations from which stars form. More precisely, what is left after the birth of stars (more specifically - the beginning of thermonuclear reactions in the gas compacted clot). Here, if correct calculations of astronomers, the process of "planet-diamond" looks the other way around: the upper layers of medium-sized star devoured by the pulsar, nucleus and impossibly tough (and only because of gravity of the pulsar J1719-1438 is not broke it to the elementary particles), with the result that turned out dense, possibly planetoobrazny, an object ... but the planet it - in its origin?
Yet we find the definition of the International Astronomical Union from 2006 (non-custodial Pluto from planet status) and we see that about what constitutes a planet (an object), it says nothing. Planet agreed to consider an object orbiting its sun, has sufficient mass to achieve hydrostatic equilibrium (have a form close to spherical), and "purify the environment" (from the residual material).
About the formation of such a body does not say anything.
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