科學(xué)60秒:神奇鉆石星 閃閃惹人愛
來源：滬江聽寫酷
2011-09-15 10:00
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(xué)小組榮譽(yù)出品】
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(xué)小組榮譽(yù)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(diǎn)碳再等個(gè)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(dá)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(wú)幾了。
它驚人的密度使其受制于強(qiáng)大的內(nèi)壓，這個(gè)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(xué)》雜志上刊登的一項(xiàng)新的研究發(fā)現(xiàn)。
接下來，天文學(xué)家就要找找鉆石星有么有戒指了。
