According to news on June 4, at the virtual American Astronomical Society meeting, an astronomical team composed of international workers published a new study, detailing an article about a satellite numbered ?SAX J1808.4-

Report on the neutron star explosion process of 3658?.

This report is the first time since humans have explored outer space that astronomers have observed the entire process of a neutron star explosion. It is of great significance to future human astronomical research.

So what is a neutron star?

Neutron stars are the densest stars besides black holes. At the end of a star's evolution, it may become one of the few endpoints after a supernova explosion due to gravitational collapse. Stars that do not have the mass to form a black hole collapse and form at the end of their lifespan.

A star between a white dwarf and a black hole.

The density of neutron stars is many times greater than the density of any material on Earth.

The density of a neutron star is 8^14~10^15 grams per cubic centimeter, which is equivalent to a weight of more than 100 million tons per cubic centimeter, which is one hundred billion times the density of water.

If the earth were compressed to this density, the diameter of the earth would be only 22 meters!

Because they are so dense, they create some of the most powerful gravitational fields in the universe.

And these extreme physical principles are part of what fascinates writers so much.

The SAX neutron star discovered this time is about 11,000 light-years away from the earth. Because the neutron star retains most of the angular momentum of its parent star, its rotation speed stunned scientists, reaching 401 times per second.

In other words, the maximum speed at which an object falls onto the surface of a neutron star will reach hundreds of thousands of kilometers per second.

It can be explained more specifically: If a person of ordinary weight (70 kilograms) encounters a neutron star, the energy it hits the surface of the neutron star will be equivalent to the power of a 200-million-ton nuclear explosion (four times the power of the world's largest nuclear bomb, the Grand Tsar

), of course this is just a hypothesis. If this is the case, this person will be torn apart by the strong tidal force as he gets closer and closer to the neutron star.

In this observation and study of neutron star explosions, the astronomical research team used seven different telescopes, including NASA's Swift X Observatory and the NICER equipment on the International Space Station.

Using these instruments, astronomers watched as the pulsar gradually grew in size and transitioned into an explosive state.

According to the description of Goodwin, a researcher on the team, they initially focused their observations on some "proliferating neutron stars". There are also other stars in the orbits of such neutron stars, so the neutron stars continue to fly by virtue of their strong attraction.

sucking away material from the star.

When the material plunder reaches a certain level, the neutron star will begin to move in a spiral manner, continue to heat up, and eventually explode. The same is true for the explosion process of the SAX neutron star.

What is the significance of studying neutron stars?

At 22:00 on October 16, 2017, Beijing time, the U.S. National Science Foundation held a press conference to announce that the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) and the Virgo Gravitational-Wave Observatory (Virgo) discovered a binary neutron star for the first time on August 17, 2017.

The merger of gravitational wave events has given astronomers a deeper understanding of the relationship between neutron stars and gravitational waves.

Then there is the source of heavy metal elements. At first, some scientists believed that gold, platinum and other heavy metal elements on the earth may come from the big explosion of star collisions hundreds of millions of years before the birth of the solar system. In the end, this hypothesis was found in neutron stars.

Answer.

Because neutron stars and black holes have so many similarities, studying neutron stars will be of great help to humans in understanding what is currently considered the most mysterious black hole.

It is conceivable that in the future, we will study more and more neutron stars, and our understanding of the universe will become clearer and clearer.