Say you need a diamond. You could go down to the jeweler, or you could put some carbon deep underground and let it sit for a couple billion years. Or you could ___1___ a starship and cruise 4,000 light years over to a dead star called pulsar J1719-1438.

The pulsar is ___2___ on its own—it's a super-dense remnant of a star spinning at about 10,000 rpm. But far more curious is the world orbiting it, which might be called a planet if it weren't so strange.

It's about as massive as Jupiter, but much more compact. It may be the ___3___ of a carbon-rich white dwarf star. But it's been mostly cannibalized by its pulsar companion, and is now just a shadow of its former self.

The object’s incredible density makes it ___4___ great internal pressure. And that pressure, acting on the carbon-rich makeup of the white dwarf, may have crystallized much of it to the particular form of carbon we call diamond. That's according to new research in the journal Science. [Citation to come.]

The next step for astronomers is to find out if the diamond planet has rings.
【視聽版科學小組榮譽出品】
hop in exotic remains subject to
如果你想要鉆石，要么去珠寶店買一顆，要么在底下埋點碳再等個幾十億年，現(xiàn)在你還可以搭上星際飛船，直奔4,000光年之外的死亡星球——脈沖星J1719-1438。 這顆脈沖星本身就是外來天體——它是轉(zhuǎn)速達10，000r/m的恒星的超高密度殘余物。它周圍圍繞的天體更奇特，都快可以稱之為行星了。 這顆星球體積和木星差不多，但密度更高，很可能是富含碳的白矮星的殘余物。不過在其脈沖星的“摧殘”之下，已經(jīng)所剩無幾了。 它驚人的密度使其受制于強大的內(nèi)壓，這個壓力作用于白矮星含碳量豐富的組成成分上，使其形成結(jié)晶，從而形成了我們所說的鉆石。這是《科學》雜志上刊登的一項新的研究發(fā)現(xiàn)。 接下來，天文學家就要找找鉆石星有么有戒指了。