Diamonds

I am so glad I woke up early this morning - there was a half hour radio programme on the history/symbolism of diamonds - the final piece of information was a report from NASA about a massive diamond 50 light years away from us in the Centauri area... it was the remains of a white dwarf - a huge diamond, just "hanging" in the sky - the carbon remains of a sun(?).   This is apparently what will happen to us - to our sun, that whatever happens to humanity on this planet, there will be a diamond in the sky eventually, marking that we were once here.    And that diamond - does that mark the site of a whole solar system with planets?  Maybe, maybe not.

The historian in me loves the idea that our solar system will still have a marker - even if it tells very little more than that a sun was once there - and has no information about the activities of the carbon-based lifeforms that depended on it.   And the idea that when (if) the universe's stars all go out there will be - what?  A great void studded with diamonds.  It makes me curiously happy.