Neutron Stars Research Paper
Science
Neutron stars, second only to black holes and pints of Guinness as the densest objects in the Universe, may have liquid in their cores, observations of a dead star shrouded in the debris of a distant supernova suggest. Two separate teams of scientists say that a frictionless state of matter called a superfluid is the only reasonable explanation for temperature changes recently observed in the youngest known neutron star.
“This the first direct evidence for superfluidity in neutron stars,” says Wynn Ho, an astrophysicist at the University of Southampton in England and coauthor of a paper that will appear in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society describing one team’s findings. The other team’s results will appear …show more content…
“This was the first time anyone found a young neutron star clearly changing temperature,” says Craig Heinke, an astrophysicist at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada, who reported the observations last year in Astrophysical Journal Letters.
Theorists had long speculated that a young neutron star should cool for the first 100 years after its creation. Neutrons can break down into protons, ejecting nearly massless particles called neutrinos that carry energy away from the star. But this energy-sapping Urca process (named for a money-sapping casino in Brazil) couldn’t account for the steep temperature drop seen by Chandra hundreds of years after the Cassiopeia supernova.
Superfluids inside neutron stars, proposed as early as 1959, offered an alternative to the Urca process. Created in laboratories by chilling liquids to ultracold temperatures, superfluids have mind-boggling abilities to climb walls and leak through solid glass containers. And they make great coolants: Superfluid helium keeps the superconducting magnets in the world’s most powerful particle collider chilled to just 1.9 degrees above absolute
Neutron stars, second only to black holes and pints of Guinness as the densest objects in the Universe, may have liquid in their cores, observations of a dead star shrouded in the debris of a distant supernova suggest. Two separate teams of scientists say that a frictionless state of matter called a superfluid is the only reasonable explanation for temperature changes recently observed in the youngest known neutron star.
“This the first direct evidence for superfluidity in neutron stars,” says Wynn Ho, an astrophysicist at the University of Southampton in England and coauthor of a paper that will appear in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society describing one team’s findings. The other team’s results will appear …show more content…
“This was the first time anyone found a young neutron star clearly changing temperature,” says Craig Heinke, an astrophysicist at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada, who reported the observations last year in Astrophysical Journal Letters.
Theorists had long speculated that a young neutron star should cool for the first 100 years after its creation. Neutrons can break down into protons, ejecting nearly massless particles called neutrinos that carry energy away from the star. But this energy-sapping Urca process (named for a money-sapping casino in Brazil) couldn’t account for the steep temperature drop seen by Chandra hundreds of years after the Cassiopeia supernova.
Superfluids inside neutron stars, proposed as early as 1959, offered an alternative to the Urca process. Created in laboratories by chilling liquids to ultracold temperatures, superfluids have mind-boggling abilities to climb walls and leak through solid glass containers. And they make great coolants: Superfluid helium keeps the superconducting magnets in the world’s most powerful particle collider chilled to just 1.9 degrees above absolute