Astronomers led by Indian American Nikku Madhusudan have discovered a giant planet with an atmosphere and core dominated by carbon, raising the prospect that diamond-studded stars may exist.

Madhusudan, a Banaras Hindu University (BHU) alumnus now at Princeton University, New Jersey, and his colleagues have observed that an extremely hot planet discovered last year has more carbon than oxygen - a feature never observed on a planet until now.