News tagged with neutron stars
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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Swift finds a gamma-ray burst with a dual personality (w/ video)
(PhysOrg.com) -- A peculiar cosmic explosion first detected by NASA's Swift observatory on Christmas Day 2010 was caused either by a novel type of supernova located billions of light-years away or an unusual ...
Nov 30, 2011 |
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Are pulsars giant permanent magnets?
Some of the most bizarre phenomenon in the universe are neutron stars. Very few things in our universe can rival the density in these remnants of supernova explosions. Neutron stars emit intense radiation ...
Nov 22, 2011 |
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Potential new NASA mission would reveal the hearts of undead stars
Neutron stars have been called the zombies of the cosmos, shining on even though they're technically dead, and occasionally feeding on a neighboring star if it gets too close.
Space & Earth / Space Exploration
Nov 09, 2011 |
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Discovery of two types of neutron stars points to two different classes of supernovae
Astronomers at the universities of Southampton and Oxford have found evidence that neutron stars, which are produced when massive stars explode as supernovae, actually come in two distinct varieties. Their ...
Nov 09, 2011 |
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NASA's Fermi finds youngest millisecond pulsar, 100 pulsars to date
An international team of scientists using NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope has discovered a surprisingly powerful millisecond pulsar that challenges existing theories about how these objects form.
Nov 04, 2011 |
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Millisecond pulsar in spin mode
Astronomers have tracked down the first gamma-ray pulsar in a globular cluster of stars. It is around 27,000 light years away and thus also holds the distance record in this class of objects. Moreover, its ...
Nov 03, 2011 |
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9 new gamma pulsars
Pulsars are the lighthouses of the universe. These compact and fast-rotating neutron stars flash many times per second in the radio or gamma-ray band. Pure gamma-ray pulsars are extremely difficult to find ...
Nov 03, 2011 |
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Satellite pieces may hit Earth on weekend
(AP) -- Pieces of a retired German satellite hurtling toward the atmosphere may crash to earth this weekend, the German Aerospace Center said Thursday.
Space & Earth / Space Exploration
Oct 20, 2011 |
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Old German satellite hurtles toward Earth
A retired satellite is hurtling toward the atmosphere and pieces of it could crash into the Earth as early as Friday, the German Aerospace Center says.
Space & Earth / Space Exploration
Oct 19, 2011 |
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Space image: Carina Nebula: 14,000+ Stars
(PhysOrg.com) -- The Carina Nebula is a star-forming region in the Sagittarius-Carina arm of the Milky Way that is 7,500 light years from Earth and the Chandra X-Ray Observatory has detected more than 14,000 ...
Oct 17, 2011 |
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Astrophysics and extinctions: News about planet-threatening events
Space is a violent place. If a star explodes or black holes collide anywhere in our part of the Milky Way, they'd give off colossal blasts of lethal gamma-rays, X-rays and cosmic rays and it's perfectly reasonable to expect ...
Space & Earth / Space Exploration
Oct 07, 2011 |
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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.
