White Dwarf Star Enters Crystallization Era, Turning Into a Cosmic Diamond
A team of astronomers has discovered a white dwarf star that is in the process of crystallizing, turning into a cosmic diamond. The star, located just 104 light-years from Earth, is composed primarily of carbon and metallic oxygen. As it cools, the carbon atoms in the star's core are rearranging themselves into a crystalline lattice. This process is expected to take billions of years, but once it is complete, the star will be a dense, hard diamond. The discovery was made by astronomers using the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope. The team was studying a system of four stars, one of which is the white dwarf. They found that the white dwarf's temperature and mass were inconsistent with a star that was still burning fuel. Instead, the data suggested that the star had already exhausted its fuel and was in the process of cooling and crystallizing. This is the first time that astronomers have observed a white dwarf star in the process of crystalliza...