It's Out There: A Planet Made of Diamond

It's going to need a much better name. A planet known as "55 Cancri e" is making headlines today after astronomers revealed that much of it is made of diamond, reports Space.com. The bad news for ambitious space travelers is that it's 230 trillion miles away and too hot for life, reports Reuters. The planet is about twice the size of our own and also orbits a sun, or something like it.

"This is our first glimpse of a rocky world with a fundamentally different chemistry from Earth," says a Yale researcher. "The surface of this planet is likely covered in graphite and diamond rather than water and granite." (More diamonds stories.)