It may sound like the stuff of dreams but astronomers have discovered a new planet made of sparkling diamond!
The planet is twice the size of little old Earth and eight times its mass and has been named 55 Cancrie.
For those of you interested, the dazzling planet is only a mere 240 trillion miles away and be sure to pack the sunscreen because temperatures at this sparkling destination soar to a roasting 1,648 degrees Celsius.
What we’d bring home from Planet Diamond!
According to Sky News, Yale University researcher Nikku Madhusudhan said: “The surface of this planet is likely covered in graphite and diamond rather than water and granite like earth.”
“This is our first glimpse of a rocky world with a fundamentally different chemistry from Earth,” Dr Madhusudhan said.
David Spergel, an astronomer at Princeton University said that the diamond planet is only the first of the treats astronomers will discover thanks to innovative technology.
“Planets are much more complex. This diamond-rich super-Earth is likely just one example of the rich sets of discoveries that await us as we begin to explore planets around nearby stars,” he said.
Richard Branson should bring us to Planet Diamond aboard Virgin Galactic
We don’t know about you but we wish Richard Branson would get cracking on that Virgin Galactic trip into space. Maybe he could drop the Her.ie girls on Planet Diamond for a little while before we take that well deserved break to the moon?
#keepondreaming
