SES Professor Wendy Panero's Research Featured

Posted by: Michael Seufer

Research done by School of Earth Science's Associate Professor Wendy Panero suggests that some stars in the Milky Way could harbor "carbon super-Earths" - giant terrestrial planets that contain up to 50 percent diamond.

Panero and doctoral student Cayman Unterborn used what they learned from the experiments to construct computer models of the minerals that form in planets composed with more carbon than Earth.

The result: "It's possible for planets that are as big as fifteen times the mass of the Earth to be half made of diamond," Unterborn said. He presented the study Tuesday at the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco.

Dr. Panero's research is further detailed in OSU Research News.

http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/diamondplanet.htm