50 light-years from here is a dead star made mostly of diamond. Two-thirds the size of Earth. As heavy as the Sun. The biggest diamond ever found on our planet was 3,100 carats. This one is 10 billion trillion trillion carats.
Diamonds are absurdly common in space. Wood is the cosmic miracle.
Carbon is the 4th most common element in the universe, after hydrogen, helium, and oxygen. Squeeze it hard enough and it turns into diamond. Inside Neptune and Uranus, the pressure is so extreme that methane in their atmospheres comes apart, and the carbon falls as diamond rain. Some of these diamonds could grow up to a meter wide. Lab experiments confirmed it in 2017, and a 2024 follow-up showed it can happen on smaller, Neptune-like planets too. Those are among the most common types of planet astronomers find outside our solar system.
Take PSR J1719-1438 b. A planet 4,000 light-years from here, twice as dense as lead. As heavy as Jupiter, but less than half its size. Probably mostly crystalline carbon. A diamond planet, orbiting a tiny dead star that spins 10,000 times a minute.
And nanodiamonds are everywhere, even in meteorites that land on Earth. They make up about 3% of the carbon in those rocks.
Wood is harder. It needs lignin, a natural compound that turns soft plant tissue into hard wood. Lignin first appeared on Earth about 385 million years ago. Earth is 4.5 billion years old. Trees have only existed for 8.5% of our planet's history.
For tens of millions of years after lignin appeared, plant matter built up in Earth's swamps faster than it could fully break down. Most of the coal humans have ever burned was once those plants.
Wood needs everything: water, photosynthesis, an oxygen atmosphere, complex life, plants with veins, and finally the chemistry to build lignin. Diamonds need just two things: carbon and pressure.
So far, every place we have looked in the universe has carbon and pressure. Only one place we know of has trees.
🚨 : La Tierra es el único planeta conocido que tiene árboles, lo que hace que la madera sea mucho más rara que los diamantes en todo el universo.