THE NEUTRON STAR THAT MAKES NO SENSE
The Universe is littered with the most unlikely objects. In the depths of space lie dead stars, each containing more mass than the Sun but crammed into a space the size of a city. They are so tightly packed that a single teaspoon of their contents would weigh more than Mount Everest – or about as much as every human that has ever lived. What’s more, they spin multiple times a second, are highly magnetised and spit out rotating beams of radiation like celestial lighthouses.
Astronomers call these enigmatic objects neutron stars. They form when a medium-sized star reaches the end of its life and explodes as a supernova, after which it leaves an incredibly dense core behind. Their name comes from the sub-atomic particles called neutrons, which you usually find inside the nuclei of atoms. The intense pressure inside a neutron star takes the other two mainstays of the atom – protons
