Neutron stars are one of the most extreme things in the universe. These are the most densest thing known in the universe out side of black hole. Calculations suggest that neutron star with weight as much as 1.5 times to sun would have diameter of 12 KMs only. Neutron stars are incredibly dense, there’s so much material put down tightly that pressure at their center is 10 trillion trillion times the pressure required to form natural diamonds inside the earth ! But how can something like this even exists ? How neutron stars are formed and what is neutron star ? We know that life of star is heavily dependent on balance of its mass/gravity and radiation pressurecreated by it’s nuclear fusionreaction. Gravity/mass pulls star itself to the core and radiation pressure does exactly opposite and pushes away from core. In core of the star, hydrogen is fused to helium. Eventually hydrogen in the core of star is exhausted. If the star is massive enough, helium is then fused to carbon. Depending on the core & mass of star this fusion cycle goes like this Hydrogen -> Helium -> Carbon -> Neon -> Oxygen -> Silicon -> Iron The fusion stops right here as iron can not be fused into any other element. As the fusion reaction has stopped, radiation pressure drops drastically ! radiation pressure and gravity are no longer in balance to each other. Gravity pull is much more than radiation pressure and hence a catastrophic collapse takes place !! the outer part of the star collapses to the core itself at about 70000 Kms/s. Eventually all electrons & protons in the atom are fused into neutrons at as dense as atomic nucleus. The outer layer gets exploded. We call this explosion as supernova. The inner/core layers survives the explosion and creates a neutron ball with little radius but incredibly high density and we call it as neutron star ! Watch the following video to see animated explanation of creation of neutron star and it’s awesome properties like *.Just 1 sugar cure of this star weighs about 1 billion tons (equal to weight of Mount Everest). *.Gravity is so strong that, if object is dropped from just 1m above it’s surface, it will collapse on surface withing 1 microsecond at speed of 7,200,000 Km/h.
Posted on: Fri, 31 Oct 2014 09:31:25 +0000
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