Sunday 2 March 2008

BPM 37093 - The Biggest diamond In The Universe


According to American astronomers at the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics, a white dwarf star in the constellation of Centaurus, next to the Southern Cross, has been found to have a 3000-kilometre-wide core of crystallised carbon, BPM 37093 or the biggest diamond in the universe.

How big is it?
It weighs 2.27 thousand trillion trillion tonnes - that's 10 billion trillion trillion carats, or a 1 followed by 34 zeroes. The biggest earthly jewel is one of the British crown jewels, the 530-carat Star of Africa.

Visualise this!!
"You would need a jeweller's loupe the size of the Sun to grade this diamond," says astronomer Travis Metcalfe, of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, who led the team of researchers that discovered it.

How much is it worth?
"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."

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2 comments:

Heather in Beautiful BC said...

I love diamonds - the bigger the better! This is a very 'cool' piece of trivia - thanks :)

Anonymous said...

me is cool