Journal #5805
Posted 14 years ago2009-05-18 23:06:50 UTC
Neutron Stars: Astonishing Facts!
I will make it no secrete, I like all things Space. If that makes me a Space Cadet geek, then so be it....I have been called worse, and there's worse things to be anyway. Let's talk about Neutron Stars. I just finished reading this pretty damn good article on them on Yahoo! - I am going to give a quick recap on the main points about Neutron Stars from the Yahoo! story:
Neutron stars are dead relics that have collapsed into very small, dense spheres with tough crusts.
A new study suggests how strong they are: The crust of neutron stars could be 10 billion times stronger than steel, based on an innovative model of elements compressed as tightly as they would be on the surface of a neutron star.
To find out how strong the crusts of neutron stars really are, Horowitz and a colleague created a computer simulation of a star's surface. Though the interior of the star is a kind of fluid mass of mostly neutrons, the crust is composed of broken-up atoms, the nuclei of unknown elements. To simulate this, Horowitz used the computer program to squeeze together virtual selenium atoms, pressing them into tiny cubes. He determined that the crust is billions of times stronger than even the hardiest metal alloys here on Earth.
Not just any old relics, neutron stars are the leftover cores of huge stars that exploded in supernovae. In a massive star's death throes, it can blast most of its outer material into space.
The stars are usually tiny, about 15 miles in diameter. But within that small ball, there is the mass of about one and a half suns. A black hole is the only thing denser.
Neutron stars are so dense that if you could dip a teaspoon into one of them and scoop out some of its neutrons the spoon would weigh 100 million tons. If you were to hold that empty teaspoon just one yard above the star's surface and drop it, it would strike the surface at 4.3 million mph.
Some incredible stuff, right? You can read the full article here: http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/neutronstarcrustisstrongerthansteel
I will make it no secrete, I like all things Space. If that makes me a Space Cadet geek, then so be it....I have been called worse, and there's worse things to be anyway. Let's talk about Neutron Stars. I just finished reading this pretty damn good article on them on Yahoo! - I am going to give a quick recap on the main points about Neutron Stars from the Yahoo! story:
Neutron stars are dead relics that have collapsed into very small, dense spheres with tough crusts.
A new study suggests how strong they are: The crust of neutron stars could be 10 billion times stronger than steel, based on an innovative model of elements compressed as tightly as they would be on the surface of a neutron star.
To find out how strong the crusts of neutron stars really are, Horowitz and a colleague created a computer simulation of a star's surface. Though the interior of the star is a kind of fluid mass of mostly neutrons, the crust is composed of broken-up atoms, the nuclei of unknown elements. To simulate this, Horowitz used the computer program to squeeze together virtual selenium atoms, pressing them into tiny cubes. He determined that the crust is billions of times stronger than even the hardiest metal alloys here on Earth.
Not just any old relics, neutron stars are the leftover cores of huge stars that exploded in supernovae. In a massive star's death throes, it can blast most of its outer material into space.
The stars are usually tiny, about 15 miles in diameter. But within that small ball, there is the mass of about one and a half suns. A black hole is the only thing denser.
Neutron stars are so dense that if you could dip a teaspoon into one of them and scoop out some of its neutrons the spoon would weigh 100 million tons. If you were to hold that empty teaspoon just one yard above the star's surface and drop it, it would strike the surface at 4.3 million mph.
Some incredible stuff, right? You can read the full article here: http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/neutronstarcrustisstrongerthansteel
5 Comments
You must log in to post a comment. You can login or register a new account.
www.VirtualHL.info
Anyway, I was under the impression that the Journals were for anything you wanted to talk about, not just maps.
Another cool thing in space are those things like black holes or what which emits materials in space and also sucks down suns into it... maybe you can remember me about this
Good that you brought up Black Holes, I found this very good 45 minute long video on the Google video site. This video is actually a space science episode that was shown on Discovery Channel on super massive Black Holes, it is worth checking out if you got the time:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3834632996973653146