This Dead Star Is Slowly Turning Into a Diamond

Fifty light-years from Earth, a dead star is slowly turning into a diamond.

It is a white dwarf called BPM 37093, crystallizing its carbon and oxygen core into a cosmic diamond of staggering mass.

A white dwarf is the cooling core of a dead star, made mostly of carbon and oxygen squeezed to incredible density. As it cools past a certain point, the carbon stops drifting and locks into an ordered lattice. It crystallizes, solidifying into one giant crystal core. Astronomers confirmed this by listening to how these stars vibrate, like reading the rings of a tree. In 2019, data from the Gaia spacecraft showed crystallizing white dwarfs are common across our galaxy. It is not a jewelry-store diamond, but it is carbon crystal under crushing pressure, about as close to a cosmic diamond as nature gets.

Our Sun has the same future. Long after it dies, its core will crystallize into a planet-sized gem, drifting cold and silent forever.

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