It’s been speculated that if there were life on neutron stars, it would be two-dimensional. Neutron stars have some of the st...
It’s been speculated that if there were life on neutron stars, it would be two-dimensional.
Neutron stars have some of the strongest gravitational and magnetic fields in the universe. The gravity is strong enough to flatten almost anything on the surface. The magnetic fields of neutron stars can be a billion times to a million billion times the magnetic field on the surface of Earth.
“Everything about neutron stars is extreme,” says James Lattimer, a professor at Stony Brook University. “It goes to the point of almost being ridiculous.”
Because they’re so dense, neutron stars provide the perfect testbed for the strong force, allowing scientists to probe the way quarks and gluons interact under these conditions. Many theories predict that the core of a neutron star compresses neutrons and protons, liberating the quarks of which they are constructed. Scientists have created a hotter version of this freed “quark matter” in the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider and the Large Hadron Collider.
The intense gravity of neutron stars requires scientists to use the general theory of relativity to describe the physical properties of neutron stars. In fact, measurements of neutron stars give us some of the most precise tests of general relativity that we currently have.
Despite their incredible densities and extreme gravity, neutron stars still manage to maintain a surprising amount of internal structure, housing crusts, oceans and atmospheres. “They’re a weird mixture of something the mass of a star with some of the other properties of a planet,” says Chuck Horowitz, a professor at Indiana University.
But while here on Earth we’re used to having an atmosphere that extends hundreds of miles into the sky, because a neutron star’s gravity is so extreme, its atmosphere may stretch up less than a foot.
No comments