In the Doctor Who episode “Midnight“, the Doctor and and Donna Noble travel to a vacation planet called Midnight.
Midnight was an airless planet in the system of the star Xion, composed mostly of diamond glaciers and mountains whichhumans had colonised.
The planet’s diamond-based geology was active. Diamond falls were a common occurrence. Midnight even had a Sapphire Waterfall. Earthquakes were thought to be impossible though. The planet had been left in silence for millions of years before humanity took over. The planet had no atmosphere and due to the destructive xtonic radiation of its sun it was thought that no life was possible on the planet, be it carbon-based, hydrogen-based, silicates, gas beings or other. – TardisWiki
Well, sometimes truth and fiction collide.
Researchers at Yale University have discovered a Super Earth planet 40 light years away that has one-third of its mass made up of diamond.
The planet, 55 Cancri e, is considered a “super Earth,” because it is much larger than our home planet — eight times Earth’s mass and twice Earth’s radius, or about the size of Neptune.
“The diamonds you would find on the surface and in the crust of this planet would be just like you would find on Earth, except very pure,” said Nikku Madhusudha, an astrophysicist at Yale who led the new study of the planet 55 Cancri e, in a phone interview with TPM. “As you went in deeper toward the core, you might find other types of diamonds, potentially even in liquid form.”
Don’t plan your interstellar vacation quite yet, though…
Unfortunately for any prospective human prospectors who want to visit the planet from Earth, that’s not likely ever going to be a possibility, due in part to the planet’s close proximity to its host star: With a year that consists of just 18 Earth days, 55 Cancri e is profoundly hot: about 3,900 degrees Fahrenheit on its surface.
“It’d be like landing on a hot coal or kindling in a fire,” Madhusudha told TPM. “The surface of the planet would be reddish-black and glowing as if you had just put it in a bonfire.”
Related articles
Pingback: Christian_Salafia
Pingback: Christian_Salafia
Pingback: RodRogueDemonHunter!