Tuesday, February 27, 2018

"A Huge Surprise" --Ultra-Dense Neutron Stars Light Up the Universe: 'A Teaspoon Would Weigh a Billion Tons' - The Daily Galaxy --Great Discoveries Channel

"A Huge Surprise" --Ultra-Dense Neutron Stars Light Up the Universe: 'A Teaspoon Would Weigh a Billion Tons' - The Daily Galaxy --Great Discoveries Channel:
163819_web"...Now, a Caltech-led team using data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory has identified a fourth ULX as being a neutron star -- and found new clues about how these objects can shine so brightly.
Neutron stars are extremely dense objects -- a teaspoon would weigh about a billion tons, or as much as a mountain.
Their gravity pulls surrounding material from companion stars onto them, and as this material is tugged on, it heats up and glows with X-rays.
But as the neutron stars "feed" on the matter, there comes a time when the resulting X-ray light pushes the matter away. 
Astronomers call this point -- when the objects cannot accumulate matter any faster and give off any more X-rays -- the Eddington limit..."
Read on!

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