diamonds

He even tagged her!

Astronomers aren't being poetic when they say this star is a diamond.

Scientists have identified what is possibly the coldest white dwarf ever detected. In fact, this dim stellar corpse is so cold that its carbon has crystallized, effectively forming a diamond the size of Earth, astronomers said.

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New atmospheric data for the gas giants indicates that carbon is abundant in its dazzling crystal form, they say.

Lightning storms turn methane into soot (carbon) which as it falls hardens into chunks of graphite and then diamond.

These diamond "hail stones" eventually melt into a liquid sea in the planets' hot cores, they told a conference.

The biggest diamonds would likely be about a centimetre in diameter - "big enough to put on a ring, although of course they would be uncut," says Dr Kevin Baines, of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.