Diamond in Space

Diamonds are not just forever it seems, but also everywhere – even in the most distant reaches of outer space. However, most diamonds in outer space are significantly smaller than those found on Earth. These diamonds measure as tiny particles less than one micrometer in width – that’s even a million times smaller than a single grain of sugar! Most of these diamonds found in outer space are located within the circumstellar disks surrounding certain stars. A circumstellar disk, simply put, is the material surrounding a star that forms the shape of a disk, like the one we mostly associate with Saturn. Although each diamond particle is negligible in terms of mass, if we were to combine all diamond constituents found throughout all of outer space, we would form a diamond as big as the moon!

Despite the fact that most diamonds are found as minute circumstellar particles, there are big exceptions, literally speaking. Just about a year ago, astronomers discovered the largest diamond ever to be found in history, both on Earth and beyond. At a distance of approximately fifty light years away from Earth, astronomers found a huge diamond measuring at 4,000 kilometers (or just over 13 million feet) in diameter, which is in fact an enormous chunk of crystallized carbon. The carat value of this colossal diamond was estimated at a whopping 10 billion-trillion-trillion carats, although of course no jeweler’s loupe this big exists to confirm this. Astronomers decided to name their diamond discovery Lucy, as a tribute to the famous Beatles song “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds”. The Lucy diamond by far exceeded all previous diamond discoveries ever made on the Earth’s surface, the largest of which was the Star of Africa coming in at a value of 546 carats.

Astronomers began to question as to how such a large diamond in the scale of Lucy could occur naturally in space, and found a very reasonable explanation to this phenomenon. Scientists believe that Lucy was in fact a star very similar to our Sun many, many years ago. They explain that this star collapsed on itself sometime in the course of history, leaving a white dwarf marvel floating in space. A white dwarf is in fact a radiating orb containing extremely high density of substance compressed into a relatively small sized orb. This radiating orb mostly consists of natural carbon matter, and therefore under the intense conditions and density, these carbon atoms had to arrange themselves in a very tight formation, eventually causing a natural lattice to occur and hence becoming a diamond. Therefore, astronomers strongly believe that Lucy is in fact a crystallization of a white dwarf.

Scientists claim that in approximately five billion years our own solar system Sun will die out and collapse on itself, causing a very similar white dwarf effect. Due to the similarities between the original star that Lucy once was in the past and our Sun, scientists suspect that the Sun will eventually also become a huge diamond just like Lucy is today. So we could in fact be witnessing a potential diamond when we look up into the Sun.

Although we are not extremely aware of this fact, there are billions of extra terrestrial diamonds floating in outer space, greatly varying in shape, size and mass. In order for diamonds to form in outer space, they have to undergo very special conditions, and these diamonds will continue to light up our skies for eternity.