Stars and Neutron Stars

So, Stars, what are they? Stars are complicated so I’ll simplify it, stars are basically a ball of gas with two equal forces shoving against each other, one of which is thermonuclear fusion, which is when the heat and pressure inside of a star get to the point where it starts merging hydrogen into helium which puts out radiation pressure which keeps the star existing, and the other is gravity which tries to force the star inward against the radiation pressure.

 

As we are now armed with this information, what is a neutron star? A neutron star is the violent and dense cousin to the white dwarf, it is a star that didn’t fully go supernova but also wasn’t massive enough to become a black hole, neutron stars aren’t very big they’re usually only a couple of kilometres in diameter, but they’re heavy, very heavy, like one teaspoon of neutron star matter is 1 billion tonnes, which is mount Everest in your hot chocolate instead of a marshmallow. Neutron Stars are more akin to planets than actual stars with an “atmosphere,” a solid crust, and a liquid core. The atmosphere is the outer part, the part we can see, the crust is made from nuclear ash (aka iron) that has merged into neutron plasma that is incredibly dense. If a neutron star were any denser it would collapse into a black hole, which does happen when two neutron stars merge. There are two types of neutron stars, the one we talked about and Magnetars, which are neutron stars with magnetic fields hundreds of times stronger than that of earth or the Suns.