Neutron Stars
Neutron stars are fascinating. Their most distinctive feature is how dense they are.
The internet told me once that a spoonful of neutron star could weigh a billion tons (or maybe it was tonnes). To quote Wikipedia (links and all)...
And because Wikipedia is more articulate than me trying to paraphrase the same information, Wikipedia also has this to say about their origins:
Anyway, back to neutron stars. In typical space-stuff fashion, the smaller things are (and by things, I mostly mean stars), the faster and hotter and generally more intense they tend to be--and neutron stars are the poster child for this. However, my understanding is that this is a fairly general term for a phenomenon that still has much room for study; there are slower, cooler variants, some that form pulsars and some that don't, and more. We are, naturally, limited by what we're able to detect and calculate.
I'm sure neutron stars could form a backbone for all sorts of sci-fi concepts, such as the novel Dragon's Egg, in which tiny creatures live and develop on the surface of one such star. Personally, I get really stuck on that imagery of a "spoonful" of neutron star. I don't know how realistic my thought-tangents are, but that single picture gives me the shivers. Super-dense fuel source? Maybe that gets mined and sold? It doesn't have to be a neutron star per se, but that seems like a pretty fun jumping-off point.
The internet told me once that a spoonful of neutron star could weigh a billion tons (or maybe it was tonnes). To quote Wikipedia (links and all)...
A neutron star is the collapsed core of a large star (10–29 solar masses). Neutron stars are the smallest and densest stars known to exist.[1] With a radius on the order of 10 km, they can, however, have a mass of about twice that of the Sun.
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| This is not a neutron star, sorry. It's here for atmosphere. |
They result from the supernova explosion of a massive star, combined with gravitational collapse, that compresses the core past the white dwarf star density to that of atomic nuclei.If you're like me and can't resist all those Wikipedia links, I have to say this spacey stuff is really interesting. One of these days, maybe I'll take the astronomy class I never managed to fit in during college...
Anyway, back to neutron stars. In typical space-stuff fashion, the smaller things are (and by things, I mostly mean stars), the faster and hotter and generally more intense they tend to be--and neutron stars are the poster child for this. However, my understanding is that this is a fairly general term for a phenomenon that still has much room for study; there are slower, cooler variants, some that form pulsars and some that don't, and more. We are, naturally, limited by what we're able to detect and calculate.
I'm sure neutron stars could form a backbone for all sorts of sci-fi concepts, such as the novel Dragon's Egg, in which tiny creatures live and develop on the surface of one such star. Personally, I get really stuck on that imagery of a "spoonful" of neutron star. I don't know how realistic my thought-tangents are, but that single picture gives me the shivers. Super-dense fuel source? Maybe that gets mined and sold? It doesn't have to be a neutron star per se, but that seems like a pretty fun jumping-off point.
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