Feb 16 2004
When choosing a Valentine's Day gift for a wife or girlfriend, you can't go wrong with diamonds. If you really want to impress your favorite lady this Valentine's Day, get her the galaxy's largest diamond. But you'd better carry a deep wallet, because this 10 billion trillion trillion carat monster has a cost that's literally astronomical!
“您需要一个像太阳大小的珠宝商来对这款钻石进行评分！”天文学家Travis Metcalfe说（Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics）, who leads a team of researchers that discovered the giant gem."Bill Gates and Donald Trump together couldn't begin to afford it."
当被要求估算宇宙珠宝的价值时，哈里·温斯顿公司（Harry Winston Inc."Who knows? It may be a self-deflating prophecy because there is so much of it."He added,"It is definitely too big to wear!"
The newly discovered cosmic diamond is a chunk of crystallized carbon 50 light-years from the Earth in the constellation Centaurus. (A light-year is the distance light travels in a year, or about 6 trillion miles.) It is 2,500 miles across and weighs 5 million trillion trillion pounds, which translates to approximately 10 billion trillion trillion carats, or a one followed by 34 zeros.
“这是所有钻石的母亲！”梅特卡夫说。“有些人将其称为'露西'，以致敬甲壳虫乐队的歌'露西在天空中用钻石。'”
钻石之星完全超过了地球上最大的钻石，这是位于英格兰皇冠珠宝中的530克拉之星。非洲之星是从地球上有史以来最大的钻石（这是3,100克拉的宝石）中砍下的。
巨大的宇宙宝石（技术上称为BPM 37093）实际上是一个结晶的白色矮人。白色矮人是一颗星星的热核，在恒星消耗其核燃料并死亡之后留下。它主要由碳制成，并由薄层的氢气和氦气覆盖。
在过去的四十年中，天文学家一直认为白矮人的内部结晶了，但是直接获得了直接证据才成为可能。
“寻找这个白矮人的水晶核心就像在寻找失落的荷兰人的矿山一样。它被认为存在数十年，但直到现在才被定位，”合着者迈克尔·蒙哥马利（剑桥大学）说。
由梅特卡夫（Metcalfe），蒙哥马利（Montgomery）和安东尼奥·卡纳（Antonio Kanaan）（UFSC巴西）研究的白矮人不仅辐射，而且是和谐的。它像巨大的锣一样响起，经历了不断的搏动。
“通过测量这些脉动，我们能够研究白色矮人的隐藏内部，就像地震测量的地震仪测量使地质学家能够研究地球内部。我们发现，这种白矮人的碳内部已经固化以形成以形成银河系最大的钻石，”梅特卡夫说。
Our Sun will become a white dwarf when it dies 5 billion years from now. Some two billion years after that, the Sun's ember core will crystallize as well, leaving a giant diamond in the center of our solar system.
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