“Our
final image should show us a companion 100 times fainter than any other white
dwarf orbiting a neutron Star and about 10 times fainter than any known white
dwarf, but we don’t see a thing. If there’s a white dwarf there, and there almost
certainly is, it must be extremely cold.”
Dr. Bart Dunlap from
the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill explaining the published paper
in the Astrophysical Journal
Astronomers
have hit the jackpot, yet again.
This
time, it’s not another earth-like exoplanet like Kepler-186f in the
Constellation Cygnus as described in my blog article
entitled “NASA
discovers earth-like exoplanet Kepler-186f in the Constellation Cygnus - 500
light years is awfully far distance to buy beachfront property”.
Rather
it’s a White Dwarf orbiting a Pulsar in the Constellation Aquarius some 900
Light Years away that’s made purely of diamonds as announced in “Cold
White dwarf Star is 'Earth-size Diamond in space'”, published June 24, 2014
11:07 AM PDT by Amanda Kooser, CNET News and
“Ancient
Earth-sized ‘diamond’ discovered in space”, published Tuesday June 24 2014
by Susan Ryan, The Journal.ie. The discovery was
published in the Astrophysical Journal.
Aside
from being made from the priceless form of Carbon, at least as far as De Beers
Cartel is concerned, it’s also the dimmest White Dwarf Star on record,
possessing surface temperatures 5000 times lower than that of our own Sun. This
may account for its composition, making it quite a rare find; A Pulsar in a
binary configuration with a Cool White Dwarf Star.
Pulsar PSR J2222-0137
and the Cool White Dwarf – Rihanna’s Diamond in the Sky Part 2
The
discovery was made by Dr. David Kaplan, a Professor at the University of
Wisconsin-Milwaukee using the three separate Telescopes for Radio Astronomy:
1. NRAO
(National Radio Astronomy Observatory)
2. GBT
(Green Bank Telescope)
3. VLBA
(Very Long Baseline Array)
Dr.
Jason Boyles, who was a part of Professor David Kaplan’s team, used the GBT
some two years ago in 2012 and discovered the binary dancing pair in the
Constellation Aquarius as described in “Earth-size
'diamond' in space: Remarkable white dwarf Star possibly coldest, dimmest ever
detected”, published June 23, 2014, Science
Daily.
4 |
Good
to note that back then he was a graduate student at West Virginia University in
Morgantown. Based on his work, the Star
was observed to orbit the Pulsar PSR J2222-0137 every 2.45 days and a rotational frequency of 30 Hz. Further observations by Dr. Adam Deller, an astronomer at
ASTRON (Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy) established the distance to
the Star as being about 900 Light Years as stated in “Astronomers
Identify Earth-Size 'Diamond' in Space”, published June 23, 2014 04:58 PM
EDT, Nature World News.
The
Pulsar PSR J2222-0137, located 900 Light Years away in the Constellation
Aquarius, had an irregular blip or delay in its Radio signal. That made them
realize that the Pulsar, a Pulsating Neutron Star, probably had a companion and
that every now and then, it passed in front of the Pulsar, temporarily blocking
and absorbing some of the radiation from the Star.
Using
the VLBA and Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, they realized that this object,
based on its gravitational field's warping of space time which delayed the
radio signal from the Pulsar PSR J2222-0137, was not another Pulsar but a Star.
Based on their calculations, they estimated its age at some 11 billion years
old, fairly young for a Star that was born around the same time as out Milky
Way Galaxy.
Even
more intriguing was that the Pulsar PSR J2222-0137 was 1.5 Solar Masses whereas
the White Dwarf Star was 1.05 Solar Masses, suggesting that the White Dwarf Star,
based on its material composition, was the same physical size as the Earth.
Even
stranger, it didn't appear in Infrared. Otherwise SOAR (Southern Astrophysical
Research) Telescope in Chile and the Keck Telescope in Hawaii with its 10 meter
Mirror would have picked up its Infrared Signature a long time ago. This
suggested that it had a very low surface temperature, which Dr. Kaplan Team
estimated to be around 2,700 degrees Celsius (4,892 degrees Fahrenheit).
This
isn’t the first time I’ve written about a diamond in the sky. In my blog article
entitled “DARPA
HTV-2 and 100-Year Interstellar Travel Research – Diamonds are Forever in the Stars”
I mentioned a Star made up of diamonds. Interestingly too, on Jupiter and
Saturn, it rains diamonds as explained in my blog article entitled
“Mona
L. Delitsky and Dr. Kevin H.Baines research indicates it rains Diamonds on
Saturn and Jupiter - Mining Rihanna's Diamonds in the Sky to make Diamond Starships”.
So
the idea of a White Dwarf that’s a large diamond didn’t seem so far-fetched,
oweing to the fact that Jupiter and Saturn are Gas Giants and are classified as
Brown Dwarfs, remnants of Stars that failed to ignite. At the pressures and
temperatures on these objects, Carbon would fuse to form stable Diamond, as the
temperatures are fairly cool, not enough for the material to ignite under
pressure into Nuclear Fusion and burn like a regular Star, but cool enough to
form Stable elements under high pressure, such as Diamonds.
The
rest of its atmosphere may have been stripped off by the rapidly rotating Pulsar’s
super strong Jets, Gravitational and Magnetic Field, leaving behind a cold
Diamond Core.
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