Twinkle, twinkle bantam star may be and influential than you thought. In Feb 2004, astronomers confirmed a star they'd been adjacent for diverse agedness was in gospel a vast hunk of crystallized carbon 4,000 kilometres in thickness - in other words, they'd initiate the diamond mother-load.

The star, which is in deed a mega-diamond, reportedly weighs 10 billion trillion trillion carats, although it is unlikely it testament ever gem its custom to a diamond dealers' scales as it's some 50 illumination age elsewhere from earth.

"You would entail a jeweler's loupe the amount of the Sun to grade this diamond," says astronomer Travis Metcalfe, of the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics, who led the party of researchers that discovered it.

The huge cosmic diamond - technically noted as BPM 37093 - is in truth a crystallized hoary dwarf. A chalky manikin is the feverous core of a star, left over after the star uses up its nuclear fuel and dies. It is make-believe mostly of carbon. The extent diamond (apparently a 'she') was christened Lucy in a tribute to the Beatles song 'Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds.'

Astronomers expect our Sun will develop into a bleached dwarf when it dies 5 billion elderliness from now. Some two billion second childhood after that, the Sun's ember core will crystallize as well, leaving a giant diamond in the center of the solar system.

"Our Sun will be remodelled a diamond that absolutely is forever," says Metcalfe.

The cosmic stone completely outclasses all diamonds that carry ever been fashion on Earth. The largest diamond weighing 546 carats was get going in South Africa. The diamond, The Star of Africa, resides in the Coronet Jewels of England. The Star of Africa was section from the largest diamond ever establish on Earth, a 3,100-carat gem.