] Astronomers announced Friday that a white dwarf star
] they've been studying is a chunk of crystallized carbon
] that weighs 5 million trillion trillion pounds. That's
] the same as a diamond that is approximately 10 billion
] trillion trillion carats, or a one followed by 34 zeros.
]
] "It's the mother of all diamonds," said astronomer Travis
] Metcalfe, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
] "Bill Gates and Donald Trump together couldn't begin to
] afford it."
]
] The object, a burned out corpse of a star named BPM
] 37093, is about 50 light-years from in the constellation
] Centaurus. It is a mere 2,500 miles wide. It's coated
] with a thin layer of hydrogen and helium. Astronomers had
] long suspected the interiors of white dwarfs
] crystallized, but only recently did they determine it to
] be so. The star pulsates like a giant gong, and the
] researchers studied those pulsations -- like seismic
] waves inside Earth -- to figure out the carbon interior
] was solidified.