HD 190412 C: The White Dwarf Star Transforming into a Cosmic Diamond

In an exciting astronomical revelation, scientists have unearthed a star that is slowly turning into a gigantic celestial diamond. This star, a white dwarf, is the remnant of a sun-like star that exhausted most of its fuel before shrinking down. When a star with a core primarily made of metallic oxygen and carbon collapses into a white dwarf and cools, it sets the stage for the transformation into a massive diamond.

However, this conversion is so gradual that scientists speculate that no star has fully transformed into a giant gleaming sphere yet. They estimate such a transformation to take a whopping quadrillion years, and considering that the universe is a mere 13.6 billion years old, it's safe to say that we're waiting for the first diamond star. To put it into perspective, a quadrillion is a thousand trillions, and each trillion equals a thousand billions.

Nonetheless, researchers believe they've stumbled upon a star in its early transformation stages. This star, named HD 190412 C, is nestled about 104 light-years away in a quadruple star system known as HD 190412.

The scientists gauged the star's temperature at roughly 6,300 degrees Celsius, placing it within the temperature range of a crystallizing white dwarf. As the system houses other stars that are yet to shrink into the white dwarf state, the researchers utilized the compositions of these still-burning stars to identify the amount of metal present in the white dwarf's core. Additionally, they estimated the star's age to be around 4.2 billion years.

Ref: Space.com