Diamonds are Forever

The Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics reports that the galaxy’s largest diamond was discovered 50 light-years away. De Beers has to hope we never figure out how to bring one of these back to Earth.

This Valentine’s Day, Give The Woman Who Has Everything The Galaxy’s Largest Diamond [CFA Press Release]

The newly discovered cosmic diamond is a chunk of crystallized carbon 50 light-years from the Earth in the constellation Centaurus. (A light-year is the distance light travels in a year, or about 6 trillion miles.) It is 2,500 miles across and weighs 5 million trillion trillion pounds, which translates to approximately 10 billion trillion trillion carats, or a one followed by 34 zeros.

“It’s the mother of all diamonds!” says Metcalfe. “Some people refer to it as ‘Lucy’ in a tribute to the Beatles song ‘Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds.'”