The Greatest Diamond Of Them All

Astronomers discovered the amazing star in 2004 - the cosmic diamond is a chunk of crystallised carbon, 4,000 kilometres across and is 50 light years from the Earth in the constellation Centaurus. It even manages to sound quite romantic when you realise that the diamond star is the compressed heart of an old star which was once bright like our Sun, but has since faded and shrunk. The Astronomers that discovered the beauty have named her 'Lucy' after the Beatles song 'Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.

The biggest diamond we have here on Earth is called Golden Jubilee which is 564 carats, and was cut from a stone from the Premier mine in South Africa, but this is absolutely nothing compared to the diamond star which would need a jeweller's loupe the size of the Sun to grade it, according to Travis Metcalfe, one of the researchers who discovered the star at the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics.

The diamond star, which is technically known as BPM 37093 is actually what is known as a crystallised white dwarf. A white dwarf is a faint star of enormous density or the hot core of a star, left over when a star has used up its nuclear fuel and dies, and the majority of its makeup is carbon. Astronomers have for a long time; more than four decades, thought that the interiors of white dwarfs crystallised but they only recently have been able get evidence of it.

The white dwarf is not only radiant but also rings like a gigantic gong, with constant pulsations. It was by measuring those pulsations that the astronomers were able to study the interior of the white dwarf, somewhat like how geologists use seismographs to measure earthquakes. It was using these methods that they figured out that the interior of this white dwarf has formed the galaxy's largest diamond.

The same thing will happen to our Sun when it dies in 5 billion years time. 2 billion years after that its core will crystallise, which will then become the galaxy's largest diamond.

So diamonds really are forever, but if you would like one a little closer to home, that is on your finger, why not head to diamondrings website for huge choices of engagement rings, wedding rings, and eternity rings as well as great advice on buying diamonds.