Diamonds in The Sky – Part 4: Carbon Planets (Episode 1/2)
Join me in an amazing voyage to what could be the most common Earth-sized exo-planets in the universe: carbon planets.
We are together, side by side, dressed with our powerful protective suit. I added an extra feature to it now. It allows us to go anywhere we want to visit, in the blink of an eye.
How cool is that!
1/ The voyage
Close your eyes…
Keep them closed…
We are currently travelling among the stars. Do not open them yet: your mind might not cope with what your senses tell you while we are on the move across the fabric of space time...
Here we go, did you feel that under your feet. We have just landed on the first Earth size exo-planet we found. Before you open your eyes, be warned, you will be surprised. It is an Earth sized planet with a normal gravity and located at the right distance from its star to hold a pleasant temperature on the surface. But do not expect to feel like at home…
2/ The visit
We landed on a beach. At least that what it appears to be: our feet are standing on what feels like and looks like sand, but it is not sand… The tiny crystalline grains on which we are standing are billions of specs of millimeter sized diamond!
In front of us, a huge black ocean... Do not go for a dip! You would never be able to get out: the ocean is made of thick, sticky and gluey tar.
Lift your eyes, and look at the sky, it is dark, with heavy clouds of smog made of a multitude of organic compounds. Yuuuks, It starts raining… arghhh, it’s gasoline! “Do not light a cigarette!” Actually, it wouldn’t be a problem as there is not oxygen here under gaseous form. The air seems to be composed mostly of carbon monoxide and dioxide. No combustion as we know it can occur here…
We decide to turn our backs from this disgusting ocean, and look at the land behind us… Wow, this is quite amazing. There is a volcano in the distance currently erupting a viscous magma sparkled with… wait a minute… huge diamonds the size of a hand are flying out of the mouth of the volcano!
We decide to go and see this phenomenon closer, and leave the diamond beach behind us. While we walk towards the volcano, we realize we are entering a very dark plain of black powdery material…
Your first step and, poufff! You are covered up to your waist with this black powder… It appears to be composed of graphite with a blend of other funky carbon based molecules and crystals like fullerenes and carbon nanotubes.
“I wouldn’t continue if I were you, You would immerse completely and sink!”
You respond, “I would just need to light up my suit’s Jetpacks to get out of here…”
Me: “Be careful though … the crystals that form this powder are highly conducting and tiny: they could infiltrate your suit and cause considerable electrical damage. You do not want to end up in that dark pit of graphite!”
You: “Okay, so let’s fire these jet packs and fly towards the volcano. “
We rise a few hundred meters above the ground which allows to admire a global view of this mysterious dark land. Actually, by doing so, we realize that we had landed close to a kind of delta: rivers of oily material appear to slowly flow in the tar ocean. The movement is slow but perceptible. Absolutely amazing!
As we continue further towards the Volcano, we notice on the way also some lakes with shores of gluey long chained hydrocarbons molecules, like tar but not as thick. The lakes themselves seem to be composed of a mixture of moderate sized molecules in a liquid state like pentane, hexane, heptane or even octane.
With the volcano nearby, this area is probable geologically active; some local quakes could occur. In a calm area, the components of the lakes might have the time to settle and maybe, the different compounds would organize themselves as layers like in an a Irish coffee!
Ah, we are approaching the Volcano...
Indeed it seems to be excreting some thick black material, like magma. Yet, at the same time many big shiny rocks are launched in the sky and fall on the volcano’s hillside.
The result is astounding: mountains of diamonds!
3/ Do such planets really exist?
Weirdly enough, If ever humanity manages to set foot on an Earth sized exo-planet one day, there are chances that the lucky astronauts will experience something similar to our imaginary voyage. Yes, Carbon planets probably exist. Some scientists even think that carbon planets would be more common than silicate based planets like Earth. Others on the other hand are much more skeptical.
Actually, one planet was found and proven to be a carbon planet, 55 Cancri e, but with surface temperatures reaching thousands of degrees, visiting it would be quite a different experience than our little voyage!
Many envision that Earth sized planets within the habitable zone of a star would look very similar to ours own. They may be forgetting that planets are built up from the same nebulae than their parent star. Therefore what exo-planets are primarily made of can be predicted by looking at the star’s composition.
We will discuss further on the existence (or not) of carbon planets in our next episode, by referring to the scientific data available. We will also see that the composition of stars (more precisely, their carbon to oxygen ratio) is really what matters in defining if carbon planets are ultra common or rare cookies in our universe. Finally, we will reflect on the possibility of life on such planets. After all, life is based on carbon!
So stay tuned!
Image Credits:
- The post's thumbnail background was created by re-colorising an NASA artistic view of an exoplanet (link)
- The past picture representing the accretion disc around a protostar originates from NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (link)
- All other pictures originate from either Pixabay or Wikimedia commons and were re-colorised by @muphy to simulate a carbon planet environment.
Reference and text sources:
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_planet
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/55_Cancri_e
- "The Diversity of Extrasolar Terrestrial Planets" proceedings of the International Astronomical Union. 5 (Symposium S265): 399–402. (link - pdf download available)
- The Compositional Diversity of Extrasolar Terrestrial Planets - In−Situ Simulations (Jade C. Bond, David P. O’Brien and Dante S. Lauretta ) (link)
- Earth-Like Planets May Be Made of Carbon (Georges Musser) - Scientific American (link)
- The carbon-to-oxygen ratio in stars with planets (P.E. Nissen, A&A 552, A73 - 2013). (link)
Hi,
I’m @muphy (see intro post),
My life revolves around music production, teaching sciences, and discovery through travel.
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I enjoyed this post! Like being in a planetarium. I’m surprised you used the term fullerenes instead of buckyballs, sounds much more fun lol. So I’m actually curious about your thought on the accretionary model of the planets? Only curious because I had read somewhere they had discovered a system where gas giants were found to be close enough to the host star that the accretionary model didn’t account for their creation. Such as how solid iron cores are found in our solar system with the gas giants being further out.
Here is a similar article, with a similar story of what I’m talking about:
https://gizmodo.com/astronomers-found-a-gas-giant-orbiting-surprisingly-clo-1701634190
I am very interested in this topic .With all your descriptions of environment it is like you really done some deep research & you really know your stuff in an Astronomical sense . I do sometimes read a professor Brian Cox book "Human Universe " I will look out for more of your writing. What is your opinion on multiverse theory or Quantum physics as it is also known ?
Yes, it takes some time to research this. It is the price to write a great post. It is fun too as I learn a lot in the process!
As for your question, well it doesn't deserve a post, but a huge series of post just to be able to provide tracks to explore a glimpse of an answer haha!.
In a few words, my belief goes into eternal inflation: a space, extremely simple with one field only: the inflaton. When a large enough quantum fluctuation of this field occures, boooom! big bang, where the field at the localised region of the fluctuation changes potential and space ceases to expand exponantially: Our universe is born. The inflationary period of our universe would just be an oscillation of this field... We are still in such an oscillation: for example, the expansion accelerating again since 5-6 billion years.
This eternally expanding inflaton field would be like a huge canvas. So of course, other zones would live similar fluctuations leading to other bigbangs.
I am nearly done with this series about diamonds in the sky. I have a few ideas for the next ones. One of these could be related to cosmology: multiverse theory, so stay tuned!.
I imagine you are an inspirational and enthusiastic teacher @muphy You have terrific storytelling ability, full of new knowledge and suspence, making the learning experience fun. If only I had been taught science and mathematics by someone like you ........ Thankfully, your students will take their learning into our future.
Wow! Thank you @ricia for these compliments. They definitely hit a chord: each person thrives to an objective of bettering himself. Well the way you imagine me is who I am trying to be. That is why I appreciated your words so warmly.
Thank you again :-)
it was like discovering new horizons of the universe :D