Space & the universe
Neutron stars: matter at the edge of collapse
11 min
What happens when a dying star crushes itself into a sphere so dense a sugar cube's worth would outweigh a mountain — and the extreme physics that governs these bizarre objects.
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Show notes
A single grain of neutron star sand weighs over five million tons due to extreme density.
Intense gravity warps space-time so severely that observers can see the back side of the star.
Conservation of angular momentum allows these twenty kilometer wide spheres to rotate seven hundred times per second.
Magnetar magnetic fields are strong enough to wipe every credit card on Earth from halfway to the moon.
Colliding neutron stars create heavy elements like gold and platinum through a process called rapid neutron capture.
The Pauli Exclusion Principle provides the subatomic pressure that prevents these massive stars from becoming black holes.
In this episode
- 1Intro1 min
- 2The Birth of a Dead Star2 min
- 3The Anatomy of Density3 min
- 4The Equation of State Mystery3 min
- 5The Brink of the Abyss2 min
- 6Outro1 min
Sources
- What's Inside a ‘Dead' Star? - NASA Science
- AaS! 248: What’s Going on Inside Neutron Stars? — Paul M. Sutter
- What happens when matter is squashed to the brink of collapse? We weighed a neutron star to help NASA find out
- What's inside neutron stars? New model could sharpen gravitational-wave 'tide' clues
- A state of matter last seen just after the Big Bang may exist inside ...
- Neutron star
- Neutron Stars: Where Matter Runs Out of Space
- What are neutron stars? The cosmic gold mines, explained | Astronomy.com
- Neutron Stars: Where a Teaspoon Weighs a Billion Tonnes | World of Physics
- Inside a Neutron Star, Matter Starts Breaking Down
- Neutron star
- Fundamental physics with neutron stars
- NASA’s NICER Probes the Squeezability of Neutron Stars - NASA
- Imagine the Universe!
- Stellar Evolution: The Deaths of Stars
- The Strange Hearts of Neutron Stars | Scientific American
- Physics of Neutron Star Crusts
- Neutron stars and the dense matter equation of state: from microscopic theory to macroscopic observations
- The Physics of Neutron Stars
- [1803.01836] Phases of dense matter in compact stars
- The Radius of the High-mass Pulsar PSR J0740+6620 with 3.6 yr of NICER Data - IOPscience
- NASA SVS | NASA’s NICER Tests Matter’s Limits
- The Radius of PSR J0740+6620 from NICER and XMM-Newton Data - IOPscience
- The Neutron Star Interior Composition Explorer Mission
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