Probing the origins of extreme neutron stars
Tuesday, May 31, 2011 - 08:01
in Astronomy & Space
(PhysOrg.com) -- Neutron stars are the unimaginably dense corpses of what were once much more massive stars that died while being ripped apart in a supernova explosion. Their average density is typically more than one billion tons per teaspoonful, even denser than the nucleus of an atom that is composed of protons and neutrons. Because these densities can never be reproduced on the Earth, these objects are great extraterrestrial laboratories for the study of how matter and exotic particles behave under extreme conditions.