News tagged with neutron stars
A new way to discover pulsars
(Phys.org) -- The Large Area Telescope (LAT), built by SLAC for the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, collects information on high-energy gamma rays from numerous sources in the sky. Among these are small, ...
May 22, 2012 |
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A supernova cocoon breakthrough
(Phys.org) -- Observations with NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory have provided the first X-ray evidence of a supernova shock wave breaking through a cocoon of gas surrounding the star that exploded. This discovery ...
May 15, 2012 |
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NASA's Chandra sees remarkable outburst from old black hole
An extraordinary outburst produced by a black hole in a nearby galaxy has provided direct evidence for a population of old, volatile stellar black holes. The discovery, made by astronomers using NASA's Chandra ...
Apr 30, 2012 |
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Powerhouse in the Crab Nebula
MAGIC telescopes measure the highest-energy gamma rays from a pulsar to date, calling theory into question.
Mar 29, 2012 |
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Neutrons uncover new density waves in fermion liquids
Scientists working at the Institut Laue-Langevin, one of the world's leading centres for neutron science, have carried out the first investigation of two-dimensional fermion liquids using neutron scattering, and discovered ...
Mar 28, 2012 |
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Launch of NASA's nuSTAR mission postponed
(PhysOrg.com) -- The planned launch of NASA's Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR) mission has been postponed after a March 15 launch status meeting. The launch will be rescheduled to allow additional ...
Space & Earth / Space Exploration
Mar 19, 2012 |
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NASA's RXTE captures thermonuclear behavior of unique neutron star
(PhysOrg.com) -- A neutron star is the closest thing to a black hole that astronomers can observe directly, crushing half a million times more mass than Earth into a sphere no larger than a city. In October ...
Mar 09, 2012 |
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A model burster: Researchers find the first neutron star that bursts as predicted
For the first time, researchers at MIT and elsewhere have detected all phases of thermonuclear burning in a neutron star. The star, located close to the center of the galaxy in the globular cluster Terzan ...
Mar 02, 2012 |
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Pulsars: The Universe's gift to physics
Pulsars, superdense neutron stars, are perhaps the most extraordinary physics laboratories in the Universe. Research on these extreme and exotic objects already has produced two Nobel Prizes. Pulsar researchers now are poised ...
Feb 19, 2012 |
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Researchers suggest high energy emissions from Crab Nebula come from wind
(PhysOrg.com) -- An international team of physicists studying the Crab Nebula have offered a new theory to explain its extraordinarily high energy emissions that have intrigued space scientists for years. ...
Searching for a solid that flows like a liquid
(PhysOrg.com) -- A series of neutron scattering experiments at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and other research centers is exploring the key question about a long-sought quantum state of matter called supersolidity: ...
Feb 03, 2012 |
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Stellar astrophysics explains the behavior of fast rotating neutron stars in binary systems
Pulsars are among the most exotic celestial bodies known. They have diameters of about 20 kilometres, but at the same time roughly the mass of our sun. A sugar-cube sized piece of its ultra-compact matter ...
Feb 02, 2012 |
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Remnant of an explosion with a powerful kick?
(PhysOrg.com) -- Vital clues about the devastating ends to the lives of massive stars can be found by studying the aftermath of their explosions. In its more than twelve years of science operations, NASA's ...
Feb 02, 2012 |
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Fermi telescope explores new energy extremes
(PhysOrg.com) -- After more than three years in space, NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope is extending its view of the high-energy sky into a largely unexplored electromagnetic range. Today, the Fermi ...
Jan 10, 2012 |
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NASA's Rossi X-Ray Timing Explorer completes mission operations
(PhysOrg.com) -- After 16 years in space, NASA's Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer (RXTE) has made its last observation. The satellite provided unprecedented views into the extreme environments around white dwarfs, neutron stars ...
Space & Earth / Space Exploration
Jan 09, 2012 |
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Neutron star
A neutron star is a type of remnant that can result from the gravitational collapse of a massive star during a Type II, Type Ib or Type Ic supernova event. Such stars are composed almost entirely of neutrons, which are subatomic particles without electrical charge and roughly the same mass as protons. Neutron stars are very hot and are supported against further collapse because of the Pauli exclusion principle. This principle states that no two neutrons (or any other fermionic particle) can occupy the same quantum state simultaneously.
A typical neutron star has a mass between 1.35 and about 2.1 solar masses, with a corresponding radius of about 12 km if the Akmal-Pandharipande-Ravenhall (APR) Equation of state (EOS) is used. In contrast, the Sun's radius is about 60,000 times that. Neutron stars have overall densities predicted by the APR EOS of 3.7 to 5.9 × 1017 kg/m³ (2.6 to 4.1 × 1014 times Solar density), which compares with the approximate density of an atomic nucleus of 3 × 1017 kg/m³. The neutron star's density varies from below 1 × 109 kg/m³ in the crust increasing with depth to above 6 or 8 × 1017 kg/m³ deeper inside.. This is approximately the weight of the entire human population condensed into the size of a sugar cube.
In general, compact stars of less than 1.44 solar masses, the Chandrasekhar limit, are white dwarfs; above 2 to 3 solar masses (the Tolman-Oppenheimer-Volkoff limit), a quark star might be created, however this is uncertain. Gravitational collapse will always occur on any star over 5 solar masses, inevitably producing a black hole.
For more information about Neutron star, read the full article at
Wikipedia.
This text uses material from Wikipedia and is available under the GNU Free Documentation License.