Good news: scientists may have found a near-limitless supply of diamonds. Bad news: it’s 40 light years away.
A rocky planet twice the radius of the Earth, 55 Cancri e’s year lasts only 18 hours. But the strangest thing about it is that it is a lot lighter than it should be.
One explanation is that much of its radius is made up of superheated water vapour. But astronomers from Yale University have an alternative theory — 55 Cancri e is made largely out of carbon. And since the most stable form of carbon is diamond, its interior could have more carats than the Crown Jewels — in fact enough diamonds to fill the Earth three times over.
Dr Nikku Madhusudhan came to his conclusion,…