What Is Hidden In The Core Of A Neutron Star?

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A buildup of magnetic energy within a

star leads to a massive solar flare

lashing outwards into the cold of space.

A distant super giant begins to fuse

iron within its core, setting off a

chain reaction that will tear it apart

completely in a spectacular hypernova.

and pressure builds up within a rapidly

spinning magnetar, causing a star quake

on its surface that releases a

superpowered gammaray

burst. These are all examples of cosmic

tipping points, moments when the

universe snaps.

The material that makes up planets,

stars, galaxies, and even ourselves may

appear stable, but it all teters on a

delicate tight rope. From the tiniest

atom to the largest supercluster, push

anything beyond a critical tipping

point, and chaos

ensues. Yet, there is often salvation.

Almost always, some subatomic safety net

kicks in to wrestle back stability and

prevent complete destruction. a way for

Jackal to keep Hyde in check. And

nowhere is this more true than inside

Neutron stars, the final barrier before

cosmic oblivion. The most extreme object

possible within space and

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time. Tiny, incomprehensibly heavy, dead

stars that spin at dizzying speeds.

Their very existence strains the laws of

physics. The gravity on their surfaces

is so strong that mountains can only

form fractions of a millimeter high. And

if you dropped something, it would reach

half the speed of light before it hit

the ground. And yet somehow they only

get more extreme as we explore deeper.

And the bizarre secret of what dwells in

their center, where matter is put under

pressures seen nowhere else in the

cosmos, may even force us to rethink

what we understand about the universe

itself.

They are the ultimate physics

experiments, forcing ordinary matter

into extraordinary situations that

teeter on the edge of oblivion. To

understand the interior of neutron stars

is to understand the true nature of

reality. And so just how far can you

push the universe before it breaks?

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4 years ago, I started the entire

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passion

project. What are stars made

of? It is Christmas Eve 2024. For those

of us on Earth and kneedeep in Marrynt,

the Parker Solar Probe is shattering

records. Hurtling through space at a

staggering 200 km/s, it swoops to within

6 million km of the sweltering solar

surface. It is the closest any

human-made object has ever dared to

venture to our sun. 6 million km may

sound a long way, but it's enough to

place Parker inside the sun's outer

atmosphere. a wispy gossamer layer known

as the corona. It is from here that the

sun launches its tirade of coronal mass

ejections. Mountain-sized bombs of

subatomic shrapnel that can cause

widespread power cuts if they reach

earth and overwhelm our magnetic field.

Drop below the corona and you'll find a

thin layer called the chromosphere.

Roughly 5,000° C just before you reach

the visible surface of the sun, the

photosphere.

The photosphere is constantly roing and

churning as super hot material bubbles

up from the cauldron below. It is an

arresting image. But to truly understand

this bizarre alien environment, what

it's actually made of, and indeed what

the interior of our own sun means for

the mysterious cause of neutron stars,

we have to go back in time more than a

century before the Parker Solar Probe

was even conceived of to Kolkata, India.

Lord Kerzen sits hunched over a map of

southern Asia, his sweat dripping onto

archipelos and

peninsulas. As viceroy of India in 1905,

he's the direct representative of the

British crown in this part of its

sprawling empire. And he has a growing

problem.

Bengalian Indian nationalists are

becoming increasingly vocal with their

descent against the British Raj. Keren's

eventual solution to partition Bengal

along religious lines creating West

Bengal for Hindus and East Bengal for

Muslims. It is a disastrous move only

serving to swell levels of discontent

leading to boycots of British produce.

And among those affected is teenager

Maggnad Saha. Born to a poor family in

Dha, now part of Bangladesh, he'd earned

a full scholarship to the British run

Dhaka Collegiate School, but was

expelled due to his participation in

these protests. The episode obviously

had a profound impact on Saha as he

remained actively involved in politics

for the rest of his life. An avid

champion of Indian

independence. But Saha's expulsion was

only a temporary setback in a

flourishing academic career. And by 1923

he'd become a professor at the

University of

Alahabad. And today he is most famous

for his work on the Saha ionization

equation. Thanks to which astronomers

can take the local temperature and

pressure and calculate how much of

different parts of our sun is ionized

and therefore what state of matter they

are made up

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of. In physics, ionization is the

process of destroying atoms, pushing

them beyond a tipping point. In the most

simplistic depiction of an atom,

negatively charged particles called

electrons orbit around a central

positively charged nucleus. Although far

from a perfect analogy, you can think of

this as similar to planets orbiting

around the sun. Whole atoms are

electrically neutral with the opposite

electric charges of the electrons and

the nucleus canceling each other out.

These opposite charges also provide an

attractive force that keeps the

electrons in orbit. Give these electrons

an energy boost, however, perhaps by

raising the temperature and they

suddenly have enough energy to break

free from their subatomic shackles. Like

India, breaking away from colonial rule,

the electrons have declared their

independence. In the language of

physicists, the material has been

ionized. The result is an electrically

charged soup of electrons and atomic

nuclei known as a