"clipka" <nomail@nomail> wrote:
> Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote:
> >   For some reason thinking about neutron stars, they sound even scarier.
> >
> >   Just imagine: A spherical object which is something like 8 times as
> > massive as the Sun, but which diameter is just a few kilometers (something
> > which you could just walk accross in less than a half hour), rotating even
> > several thousands of times per second.
> >
> >   I wouldn't want such an object anywhere near me... :P
>
> .... so you'd prefer a thing near you that you can't even *see* that it's there?
> :P
>
> But neutron stars are scary enough indeed. Just imagine: The gravitation on
> their surface is so strong that although they're incredibly hot, their
> atmosphere is just about a meter thick. And you better hold on tight to your
> mobile phone, because if you'd accidently drop it, it would *SLAM!* into the
> ground at something like 4.3 *MILLION* mph! Now explain *that* to customer care
> service, with all those "warranty void if removed" labels not only peeled off,
> but probably disintegrated into subatomic particles upon impact...
>
> Scary! Better not go there...
>
> Or think about that spacetime is so warped already that their circumference is
> not 2pi r, but something like 4pi r... of which you can see something like 3pi
> r at the same time, because the gravitation is so strong that the photons get
> the bends... and everything flying away from it at less than something like 33%
> the speed of light will ultimately fall back...
>
> And although the light leaving them experiences a *considerable* redshift,
> they're so mind-bogglingly hot that most photons reaching us are still in the
> X-Ray spectrum...
>
> Yeah, children, heed my advice: Better not go there... so you're right: Who
> needs black holes if he can have neutron stars to stay clear of! ;)

Yes, Neutron Stars are the other freak little brother of blackholes.  If the
immense gravity and pressure isn't enough to impress someone, nor are the small
size and humongous rotation periods, then perhaps the fact that it's not
constituted of any chemical element in existance, but mostly neutrons alone,
should do the trick.

BTW, up until recently the only astronomy site I usually frequently visited was
NASA's famed Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOTD).  This conversation led me to
finally meet the Hubble site:

http://hubblesite.org/

Wonderful.

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