- Attachment: Image of Neutron Star.
- This Neutron Star is part of a binary system. Its companion is a Red Giant star that is 1/7 the mass of our Sun. The two stars orbit each other every 26 hours.
- The Neutron Star is spinning so fast it would fly apart except for the fact that its surface is solid and harder than a diamond. The density of the star is 50 trillion times heavier than the density of solid lead. Its magnetic field is a trillion times more intense than that of our Sun.
- A Neutron Star is a collapsed star that no longer has any more fusion fuel to burn. It remains a hot cinder. In this case a hot spinning cinder that can not offer any radiation or resistance to the gravity that is compressing it. For a normal collapsing star the size- of- our- Sun , gravity would compress it to the size of our Earth before a resistance could stop it. At this point compression would stop because the electron’s pressure to refuse to collapse any further would hold up the gravity. The star this size would remain a White Dwarf Star.
- However, if the size of the star was 40% larger than our Sun ( >1.4 Solar Mass), then the electron’s pressure would break down. The electrons would collapse into the protons in the nucleus and become neutrons. When this happens the star collapses from Earth-size to a ball 20 miles in diameter. A Neutron Star is 20 miles in diameter and still weighing more than the Sun.
- When this collapse is happening the spinning star is speeding up its rate of rotation. Just like an ice skater pulling in her outstretched arms speeds up her rate of spin. When a star’s diameter shrinks it spin rate goes up to maintain the equivalent Angular Momentum. This is the law of the Conversation of Energy, or , in this case the Conservation of Angular Momentum. This particular Neutron Star is spinning at 716 revolutions per second. ( See footnote 1 for some of the math and history)
- A kitchen blender on its highest speed is rotating a hundred revolutions per second. This 20 mile diameter ball is rotating 716 revolutions per second. The equator on the ball is traveling at 43,000 miles per second. If the Earth were doing this instead of a day taking 24 hours we would have 2 days per second. How time flies.
- Not only would you be spinning this fast standing on the equator, the gravity is so intense that your whole body would be crushed to the size of a protoplasm. You would spread across the surface of the star like a film of oil only one atom thick.
- It life were not difficult enough under these conditions the star would be releasing quick bursts of energy with every rotation. Each flash of radiation occurs across a wide range of wavelengths. The flashes are so fast that we can not see them. The star looks like a continuous source of light. Our eyes can not separate flashes that are faster than 30 times per second, let alone 716 flashes per second.
- The spin rate was not detected until 2004 when radio signals were analyzed. This radio signal became a flash along our line of sight because the beam axis of the jets is slightly off center from the rotation axis of the star. This causes the beam to rotate like a lighthouse beacon. Radio signals could be analyzed to pull up the repetition rate of 716 times per second.
- For astronomy to date, this is the fastest spinning star in the Cosmos. It could not be crushed any denser without becoming a “Quark Star”. This phenomena is in theory only. Yet to be discovered. Theoretically, just as electrons give out and get crushed down to neutrons, the neutrons could get crushed down to their fundamental particles the Quarks. An announcement will be made shortly, stay tuned.
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(1) How does a law of conservation make a Neutron Star spin so fast? Emmy Noether proved mathematically in 1916, when she was 34 years old, that spatial symmetry ( a rotating sphere looks the same from any direction) required a law of conservation. That law was the Conservation of Angular Momentum. She also proved that time symmetry, time translation, ( the law that physics is the same no matter when you apply it) required the Conservation of Energy.
- Angular Momentum is the product of mass and velocity and radius of a rotating body. Mass stays the same so if the radius is reduced in order for the product to remain unchanged the velocity of rotation must increase.
--------------------------- L = m * v * r
- If the Neutron Star has a radius of 10 kilometers and it is spinning at 716 rotations per second how big was it to start with?
---------------- Circumference = 2 * pi * r = 2 * pi * 10 km = 62.8 kilometers
---------------- Completing 716 rotations per second is a velocity of 44,988 kilometers per second. ( 32 million miles per hour or 5% the speed of light.)
---------------- The mass of the Neutron Star is 2 Solar Mass = 2 * 6 * 10^24 kilograms
--------------- The Big Stars rotation was 57 days.
--------------- Angular Momentum = 12 * 10^24 kg * 4.5 *10^24 km/sec * 10 km
-------------- 57 days is 4,924,800 seconds
-------------- The velocity = 2 * pi * r km / 4.9* 10^6 seconds
-------------- The mass stays the same, and cancel out of the equation.
-------------- 4.5 *10^24 km/sec * 10 km = ( 2 * pi * r km / 4.9* 10^6 sec ) * r
------------------ r^2 = 35 * 10^10 km
----------------- r = 5.9 * 10^5 km
----------------- r = 367,950 mile radius
------------------ Our Sun’s radius is 432,292 miles.
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(2) Emmy Noether born 1882 to a math teacher in Nazi Germany. She was not allowed go to school or later to teach in Germany because she was a woman and a Jew. She learned on her own auditing her father’s classes. She wrote the laws of conservation in 1916. Albert Einstein helped to get her through immigration into the United States, out of Nazi persecution. She taught math at a girls school in Pennsylvania. Died in 1935 of ovarian cancer. She was one of the very first women scientists. She discovered one of the most powerful laws in all of physics.
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