News tagged with neutron stars

Theoretical physics breakthrough: Generating matter and antimatter from the vacuum

Under just the right conditions -- which involve an ultra-high-intensity laser beam and a two-mile-long particle accelerator -- it could be possible to create something out of nothing, according to University of Michigan ...

Physics / General Physics

created Dec 08, 2010 | popularity 4.6 / 5 (76) | comments 120 | with audio podcast

Radio pulses from pulsar appear to move faster than light

(PhysOrg.com) -- Laboratory experiments in the last few decades have shown that some things can appear to move faster than light without contradicting Einstein's special theory of relativity, but now astrophysicists ...

Physics / General Physics

created Jan 14, 2010 | popularity 4.4 / 5 (56) | comments 76 | with audio podcast report

Star crust 10 billion times stronger than steel, physicists find

(PhysOrg.com) -- Research by a theoretical physicist at Indiana University shows that the crusts of neutron stars are 10 billion times stronger than steel or any other of the earth's strongest metal alloys.

Space & Earth / Astronomy

created May 06, 2009 | popularity 4.5 / 5 (47) | comments 26

Giant ring of black holes

(PhysOrg.com) -- Just in time for Valentine's Day comes a new image of a ring -- not of jewels -- but of black holes.

Space & Earth / Astronomy

created Feb 09, 2011 | popularity 4.8 / 5 (43) | comments 22 | with audio podcast

Scientists investigate the possibility of wormholes between stars

(PhysOrg.com) -- Wormholes are one of the stranger objects that arise in general relativity. Although no experimental evidence for wormholes exists, scientists predict that they would appear to serve as shortcuts ...

Space & Earth / Astronomy

created Feb 25, 2011 | popularity 3.8 / 5 (41) | comments 186 | with audio podcast report

Astronomers discover most massive neutron star yet known (w/ Video)

(PhysOrg.com) -- Astronomers using the National Science Foundation's Green Bank Telescope (GBT) have discovered the most massive neutron star yet found, a discovery with strong and wide-ranging impacts across ...

Space & Earth / Astronomy

created Oct 27, 2010 | popularity 4.7 / 5 (33) | comments 8 | with audio podcast

Fahrenheit -459: Neutron stars and string theory in a lab

(PhysOrg.com) -- Using lasers to contain some ultra-chilled atoms, a team of scientists has measured the viscosity or stickiness of a gas often considered to be the sixth state of matter. The measurements ...

Physics / General Physics

created Dec 09, 2010 | popularity 4.8 / 5 (32) | comments 8 | with audio podcast

Mass limits of dark matter derived from 'strange' stars

(PhysOrg.com) -- Much of the matter in our universe may be made of a type of dark matter called weakly interacting massive particles, better known as WIMPs. Although some scientists predict that these hypothetical ...

Physics / General Physics

created Oct 12, 2010 | popularity 4.5 / 5 (33) | comments 39 | with audio podcast feature

Gravity might amplify quantum fluctuations, create astrophysical objects

(PhysOrg.com) -- In a new study, physicists have proposed that gravity could trigger a runaway effect in quantum fluctuations, causing them to grow so large that the quantum field’s vacuum energy density could dominate its ...

Physics / General Physics

created May 17, 2010 | popularity 4.6 / 5 (28) | comments 9 | with audio podcast report

Chandra finds superfluid in neutron star's core

(PhysOrg.com) -- NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory has discovered the first direct evidence for a superfluid, a bizarre, friction-free state of matter, at the core of a neutron star. Superfluids created in ...

Space & Earth / Astronomy

created Feb 23, 2011 | popularity 4.7 / 5 (27) | comments 32 | with audio podcast

Cosmic crashes forging gold: Nuclear reactions in space do produce the heaviest elements

(PhysOrg.com) -- Collisions of neutron stars produce the heaviest elements such as gold or lead. The cosmic site where the heaviest chemical elements such as lead or gold are formed has most likely been identified: ...

Space & Earth / Astronomy

created Sep 09, 2011 | popularity 4.8 / 5 (25) | comments 46 | with audio podcast

Mysterious pulsar with hidden powers discovered

Dramatic flares and bursts of energy - activity previously thought reserved for only the strongest magnetized pulsars - has been observed emanating from a weakly magnetised, slowly rotating pulsar. The international ...

Space & Earth / Astronomy

created Oct 14, 2010 | popularity 4.9 / 5 (24) | comments 3 | with audio podcast

Searching for gravitational waves

Colliding neutron stars and black holes, supernova events, rotating neutron stars and other cataclysmic cosmic events… Einstein predicted they would all have something in common – oscillations in ...

Space & Earth / Astronomy

created Aug 09, 2011 | popularity 4.8 / 5 (24) | comments 70 | with audio podcast

Physicists Identify New Kind of Star

(PhysOrg.com) -- Stars don't exactly ease into retirement, and for some stellar objects, the twilight years just got more complicated.

Space & Earth / Astronomy

created Apr 01, 2010 | popularity 4.7 / 5 (24) | comments 18 | with audio podcast

Neutron star blows away models for thermonuclear explosions

(PhysOrg.com) -- Amsterdam astronomers have discovered a neutron star that confounds existing models for thermonuclear explosions in such extreme objects. In the case of the accreting pulsar IGR J17480-2446, ...

Space & Earth / Astronomy

created Sep 14, 2011 | popularity 4.8 / 5 (23) | comments 74 | with audio podcast

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.