Message #39103

[mccoy]

Steve, the Britannica does a good job to underline some characteristics of this extreme object of nature.

Just to clarify a couple of concepts:

Our sun is 864,000 miles (1392000 km) in diameter. A neutron star with the same mass of our sun would have a diameter of about 10 km = 6 miles.
Consequently, the measure by which the mass is compressed is huge. 10¹⁴ times the density of water means 10 followed by 14 zeros, so, if I'm not wrong, 100 trillion times the density of water, that is, a 2-pints bottle with neutron star material inside would weigh (on the earth surface) 100 trillions kilograms or 220 trillions of pounds. Good luck trying to lift that bottle!

These are the orders of magnitude:

Sun average density= 1.4 times the density of water

Sun average density= 5.5 times the density of water

Neutron star average density= 100 trillion times the density of water

The interesting side of neutron star is that many aspects of it can be studies since some information is sent outside, whereas the inner part of black holes remains completely unknown.