Astronomers discovered the largest diamond of all times in space.

I found this article an interesting intellectual exercise. Why? Well, anyone that has studied even basic astronomy has heard about white dwarf stars and how they are formed, and what their makeup is like in latter stages of their life. Basically what I found interesting is that I understood the sequences of a star like our own or slightly larger going off main sequence. Going through it red giant stage and collapsing back to a white or brown dwarf. The cause is mostly running out of hydrogen and burning helium into carbon. (gross oversimplification, I know. ) Intellectually you know that this carbon has to be under extreme compression....but I just never went to the next logical step. What exactly is this compressed carbon....well in Pravda online (I know.... first time I ever ran across a straight science article here....one never knows) I saw a title that I just had to read. Astronomers discover largest diamond in space! Here are some excerpts, click on the article title to read complete story.

Astronomers discovered the largest diamond of all times in space. The weight is estimated at ten billion trillion trillion carats or five million trillion trillion pounds). The space diamond is virtually an enormous chunk of crystallized carbon, 4,000 kilometers in diameter. The stone is located at a distance of 50 light years from Earth, in the Constellation Centaurus. The "diamond" also known as BPM 37093, is actually a crystallized white dwarf. A white dwarf is the hot core of a star, left over after the star uses up its nuclear fuel and dies. It is made mostly of carbon and is coated by a thin layer of hydrogen and helium gases.