Monday, November 14, 2011

The "Zombies of the Cosmos"

Have you heard of Neutron stars? Here is some information about them:
Neutron stars have been called the zombies of the cosmos, shining on even though they're technically dead, and occasionally feeding on a neighboring star if it gets too close.

They are born when a massive star runs out of fuel and collapses under its own gravity, crushing the matter in its core and blasting away its outer layers in a supernova explosion that can outshine a billion suns.

The core, compressed by gravity to inconceivable density – one teaspoon would weigh about a billion tons on Earth – lives on as a neutron star. Although the nuclear fusion fires that sustained its parent star are extinguished, it still shines with heat left over from its explosive formation, and from radiation generated by its magnetic field, which became intensely concentrated as the core collapsed, and can be over a trillion times stronger than Earth


The link: http://spacestation-shuttle.blogspot.com/2011/11/potential-new-nasa-mission-would-reveal.html

1 comment:

Terri Wagner said...

Awesome stuff out there in space.