A planet made of Diamonds?

Back in 2007, I wrote this article which dealt with the "discovery" of the largest diamond in the galaxy, which scientists concluded was the exposed core of a white dwarf star. So when I first started seeing this article making the rounds, I just figured that it was new people finding old stories. Then Tim Sayell sent me this Yahoo News item which deals not with white dwarf cores, but a very unusual planet!

Located about an eighth of the way toward the center of the Milky Way from the Earth, the strange crystalline planet is probably the remnant of a once-massive star that has lost its outer layers. Now this is at first glance the makings of a white dwarf, but the weirder thing is that even if it were the remnants of a massive star, it appears that the outer layers of the star's "atmosphere" were stripped off by a massive companion neutron star which it orbits every two hours. This orbit is so tight it would fit inside our own Sun!

It gets weirder still, carbon in a crystalline matrix...got it, diamond like material. Knowing that it is small but with the ability to crush carbon down to a crystal mean ultra-massive - scientists calculate slightly more than Jupiter, but with such a small size, something in the area of 20 times as dense. Oxygen is likely to be present at the surface, but lighter elements like hydrogen and helium are not present.

Read complete article here Wikipedia article here

Neutron Stars can create impossible matter

Hey, want ta get ya mind twisted sideways? Lets talk about "super-fluids". One of the strangest things I have ever read about. A super-fluid really isn't....a fluid that is, not in the traditional sense. Super-fluids are theoretical matter that does things normal matter could not. A super-fluid happens when viscosity drops to zero and thermal conductivity becomes infinite. That means that it would be totally frictionless and could flow in ANY direction and while flowing it would have the exact same temperature throughout the "fluid". First weird thing? I could not be held in any kind of traditional container as we know them. Because it could flow up as easily as flowing across.

It goes without saying that the creations of these exotic materials takes an inordinate amount of pressure and energy. Lot of energy. One place that could support a form of super-fluid would be a neutron star (the remnants of a collapsed super giant star) and luckily there wold be indications this was taking place. Losing energy (brightness) and emitting neutrinos is a dead giveaway.

From the IO9 article:

• Cassiopeia A supernova fits this bill perfectly - since its discovery in 1999, the neutron star has lost 20% of its brightness and about 4% of its temperature. That's incredibly rapid temperature loss, and the best explanation for it is the creation of neutron super-fluids inside the star.

We are not likely to see super-fluids created anytime soon in the lab. The fantastic pressures and relatively low temperatures are still beyond our technical expertise.

Read the IO9 article for more info

Monster Neutron Star Discovered

The neutron star is on of the weirder characters in the cast of players making up the universe. A structure whos' very matter masses millions of tons per cubic centimeter. Its' very nature so extreme as to be more science fiction than science. Created during the collapse of an equally spectacular event a star's last hurrah - a super-nova. Most super-nova events are thought to end in the creation of a black hole. But if the mass is just short of what is needed then the collapse stops at that strange quasi matter of a neutron star.

In a neutron star there are no protons and no electrons. All the space is crushed out of the atoms pushing the neutrons and electrons together making neutrons. A whole star's worth of neutrons. But the creation of the neutron star is a knife edge balancing act. Most have masses that are equal to 1.3 to an upper limit of 1 and a half solar masses all compressed into sphere probably no larger than 20 miles across. At least that was what was thought to be the limits until just recently.

Astronomers using the National Science Foundation's Green Bank Telescope, have discovered a neutron star of 2 solar masses. This discovery means that a great deal of what was thought to be understood about neutron stars has to be rethought or abandoned completely as well as having implications of science's understanding of all matter at extremely high densities and many details of nuclear physics.

Read complete article from The Daily Galaxy here

Black Hole Creation Theory In Question

Tim Sayell sends in an article from Yahoo News about a new theory that is shaking the foundation of stellar mechanics and the formation of "Black Hole" in particular.

Present wisdom has it that black holes are formed when extremely massive stars reach the end of their lives and collapse in on themselves creating super dense objects with gravity so strong that not even light can escape.

However a cluster of extremely large bright stars (some a thousand times the diameter of our sun) was discovered in the earth 60s.

• ... in a cluster of stars known as Westerlund 1, located 16,000 light years away in the constellation of Ara, the Altar.

In amongst these massive stars was a very rare magnetar.

• (a magnetar is) a particular kind of neutron star, formed from the explosion of a supernova, that can exert a magnetic field a million, billion times strong than Earth's.

A neutron star is like an abortive black hole. This phenomenon is also produced from a very massive star and much like the stars that produce a black hole, they end their life cycle by collapsing in on themselves. However they are not massive enough to collapse all the way to a black hole but stop at a state just as strange. When these stars collapse they create gravitational and magnetic fields so strong that atoms can no longer maintain their normal separation of electrons and proton which which crash together forming a neutron.

It is commonly held that when a star of about 10 to 25 solar masses collapses it will form a neutron star, above 25 and the collapse will not stop but continue to create the ultra dense black hole. Now here is where the really weird stuff comes in. The star that had to collapse to form the magnetar in the Westerlund 1 cluster had to have been 40 solar masses.

For those of you on the ball you have to be thinking that something isn't adding up. Somehow the star that eventually formed the Westerlund 1 magnetar had to loose almost 50% of its' mass shortly before it collapsed.

Read the rest of the Yahoo News article here

What newborn weighs a billion tons a spoonful?

A new born Neutron Star does. Neutron stars, the ultra dense remains of a collapsed super giant star after going super nova. The neutron star is so compacted by immense gravity that all of an atom's components are crushed into the atomic core and those neutrons so dense that a square centimeter weighs millions of tons.

A new neutron star has been observed for the first time. Just 330 years old the star has been located in the supernova nebula Cassiopeia A. It's age isn't the most unusual part either. It's just 12 miles across.

And it gets stranger! From the article:

• This neutron star was born so hot that nuclear fusion happened on its surface, producing a carbon atmosphere just 10 centimeters thick.

Read more: at Mail online

Swift discovers a Magnetar?!

Shaun loves to find the strange when it comes to astronomy. As we have seen with some of his earlier stories on BMU (*Last Light, Hubble, Curtain Call) and this discovery is no exception.

On June 10, 2007, a spike of gamma-rays lasting less than five seconds was detected by NASA's Swift satellite. But this high-energy flash wasn't a gamma-ray burst - which would herald the formation of a black hole. During the next three days, the object brightened and faded in visible light 40 times! Eleven days later, it flashed again, this time at infrared wavelengths. Then, it disappeared from view.

Astronomers think the object was a neutron star -- the crushed core of a massive star that long ago exploded as a supernova. A team of 42 scientists have concludes that the object is a special type of neutron star called a magnetar, of which only a dozen have been discovered so far.

Although measuring only about 12 miles across -- neutron stars have the strongest magnetic fields in the cosmos. magnetars may have magnetic fields more than 100 times the strength of typical neutron stars.

So what caused this particular magnetar to put on such a dazzling show? Neutron stars have massive gravities as well as incredible fast rotation. Mix that with the ultra strong magnetic field and you have the makings of what is called a star quake. These quakes are so strong that they fracture the surface of the magnetar and eject huge amounts of energy which is spun up by the magnetic fields.

> NASA's Swift Web site

*these stories and many others by Shaun Saunders can be found in his book Navigating the New World are available from Anti Sf

NASA can now predict a neutron star explosion

Using observations from NASA’s Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer (RXTE), an international team of astronomers has discovered a timing mechanism that allows them to predict exactly when a superdense star will unleash incredibly powerful explosions. The bursts occur on a neutron star (the remnants of a collapsed super nova) which is often part of a binary pair. Hydrogen and helium gas from a companion star spirals onto the neutron star, slowly accumulating on its surface until it heats up to a critical temperature. Suddenly, the hydrogen and helium begin to fuse uncontrollably into heavier elements, igniting a thermonuclear flame that quickly spreads around the entire star. The resulting explosion appears as a bright flash of X-rays - releasing more energy in just 10 to 100 seconds than our Sun radiates in an entire week. Up until now, there has been no way to predict when the next explosion is likely to occur. The key to the discover lies in observations from the RXTE satellite, which can make extremely accurate timing measurements of x-ray emissions from neutron stars as they fuse gasses syphoned off their companion star. On the surface of the neutron star, these gasses fuse at very predictable periods. However as the the bursts of x-rays (which are given off each time hydrogen and helium atoms fuse into heavier elements ) slow down - scientist now know that an explosion is immanent.

Space-time Distorts Near Neutron Stars As Einstein Predicted

Using European and Japanese/NASA X-ray satellites, astronomers have seen Einstein’s predicted distortion of space-time around three neutron stars, and in doing so they have pioneered a groundbreaking technique for determining the properties of these ultra-dense objects. Neutron stars contain the most dense observable matter in the universe. They cram more than a sun’s worth of material into a city-sized sphere, meaning a few cups of neutron-star stuff would outweigh Mount Everest. Astronomers use these collapsed stars as natural laboratories to study how tightly matter can be crammed under the most extreme pressures that nature can offer. Astronomers studied a spectral line from hot iron atoms that are whirling around in a disk just beyond the neutron star’s surface at 40 percent the speed of light. They found that the iron line is broadened asymmetrically by the gas’s extreme velocity, which smears and distorts the line because of the Doppler effect and beaming effects predicted by Einstein’s special theory of relativity. The warping of space-time by the neutron star’s powerful gravity, an effect of Einstein’s general theory of relativity, shifts the neutron star’s iron line to longer wavelengths.

An artist depicts a disk of hot gas whipping around a neutron star. The gas in the inner part of the disk whirls around the neutron star at about 40 percent the speed of light, so fast that it experiences effects predicted by Einstein's theories of relativity. Superheated iron atoms in this region emit X-rays at a characteristic wavelength, but the spectral feature is highly distorted by the relativistic effects. (Credit: NASA/Dana Berry)

Possible Closest Neutron Star To Earth Found

From ScienceDaily:

Using NASA's Swift satellite, McGill University and Penn State University astronomers have identified an object that is likely one of the closest neutron stars to Earth -- and possibly the closest. The object, located in the constellation Ursa Minor, is nicknamed Calvera, If confirmed, it would be only the eighth known "isolated neutron star" -- meaning a neutron star that does not have an associated supernova remnant, binary companion, or radio pulsations. What also makes this discovery unusual is that the object is not associated with any optical counterpart down to a very faint magnitude. According to Robert Rutledge of McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, (who originally called attention to the source) there are no widely accepted alternate theories for objects like Calvera that are bright in X-rays and faint in visible light. Exactly which type of neutron star it is, however, remains a mystery. As Rutledge says, "Either Calvera is an unusual example of a known type of neutron star, or it is some new type of neutron star, the first of its kind." If the observations are correct, Calvera is 250 to 1,000 light-years away and being this close close to Earth, it is a promising target for many types of research.