News Currents: A Planet Made of Diamonds, and More Links

Below are a handful of fun and interesting science stories that stood out while our Inside Science team focused on covering the Nobel Prize awards.

Researchers from the U.S. and France reported that a planet 40 light years away is made of diamonds. Its surface temperature is about 3,900 degrees Fahrenheit. A writer from Reuters took the opportunity to make literary allusions to F. Scott Fitzgerald, and a Forbes columnist worked out how much a diamond three times the mass of the earth would be worth. I especially enjoyed that the latter showed the calculations.

One of the biggest science-related headlines this week grew from a statement made by Paul Broun, a Republican Congressman from Georgia, who said that he believed the Earth is only 9,000 years old. Livescience followed up by interviewing a geochemist to describe the geological evidence indicating that the Earth is over 4.5 billion years old.

And from the lighter side -- we have from Yahoo! a tale of using forensic science to track down a man who left a hotel without paying -- but didn’t remember to pack his toothbrush before he escaped.