Pint-sized danger: neutron stars
1 Tiny but mighty
The catastrophic collapse of a star into a neutron star squashes both matter and magnetic field into a space about the size of a city. Despite this diminutive size, a neutron star weighs more than the Sun.
3 Radio lighthouse
The magnetic field generates beams of energy at the neutron star’s poles. Like a lighthouse, these beams rotate with the neutron star, and we can hear them as pulses of radiation with our radio telescopes – hence why they are sometimes called pulsars.
5 X-ray source
If a neutron star starts to suck in material from the surrounding region, it becomes a very powerful source of X-rays – one of the strongest in our galaxy. There are thought to be 100 million neutron stars in our Milky Way.
2 She’s electric
Rotating many times a second, the electric field generated by a neutron star is 30 million-times greater than a lightning bolt. We’re talking about a voltage measured in petavolts, which is a quadrillion volts!
4 Mighty magnetism
The magnetic field of a typical neutron star can be a million-times stronger than Earth’s own magnetism. Magnetars, on the other hand, can have magnetic field strengths over a trillion times more than Earth’s.