Early sun

Around 4,500,000,000 years ago, the early sun produced powerful x-ray emissions of 99,999,7270 C. It may have rocked its surrounding disk from which planets formed and prevented the earth from rapidly spiralling into the sun and being destroyed, say NASA astrono-mers who have been analy-sing data gathered by the Chandra X-ray Observatory.

First diamond

Using x-ray diffraction and an electron microprobe, a Chinese-US team of scientists studied 4,500-year-old ceremonial burial axes and concluded that the stone-age craftsmen in China polished objects using diamonds 2,000 years before anyone else had the idea, reports Archaeometry. Quartz would not have been the only abrasive able to get such a lustrous finish.

Distant planet

An international group of sky-watchers, including two New Zealand amateurs, has discovered a planet 15,000 light-years from the earth. The planet, several times the mass of Jupiter and one of the most distant yet discovered, was spotted through a process called “microlensing”, says the Astrophysical Journal Letters.