Astronomy

  Neutron Stars are one of the most extreme and violent things in the Universe. Giant atomic nuclei, only a few kilometres in diameter, but as massive as stars. And they owe their existence to the death of something majestic Stars exist because of a fragile balance. The mass of millions of billions of trillions of tons of hot plasma are being pulled inwards by Gravity and squeeze material together with so much force that nuclei fuse. Hydrogen fuses into Helium. This releases energy which pushes against gravity and tries to escape As long as this balance exists, stars are pretty stable Eventually, the hydrogens will be exhausted Medium stars like our Sun go to a Giant phase where they burn Helium into Carbon and Oxygen before they eventually turned into White Dwarfs. But in stars many times the mass of our Sun, things get interesting when the Helium is exhausted. For a moment, the balance of pressure and radiation tips and the gravity wins - squeezing the star tighter than before Th...