The astronomy world is in a state of great excitement, thanks to new observations of the disk of matter surrounding the star Beta Pictoris. It appears that it has twice the expected amount of carbon in it. As usual, no-one is sure what this actually means in practice – it may be that this happens all the time (it’s just a phase that this and all other star systems go through), or it may be a rare anomoly that could produce spectacular and esoteric results when planets are formed. Diamond mountain ranges, anyone?