Neutronenüberständen

Neutronenüberstände, also known as neutron stars, are the incredibly dense remnants of massive stars that have collapsed at the end of their life cycle. They are formed when a star, typically between 8 and 20 times the mass of our Sun, exhausts its nuclear fuel and undergoes a supernova explosion. The outer layers of the star are blown away, while the core implodes under its own gravity.

The immense gravitational pressure forces protons and electrons to combine, forming neutrons. This results in an object with a density so extreme that a teaspoonful of neutron star material would weigh billions of tons. Neutron stars are incredibly small for their mass, typically only about 20 kilometers in diameter.

Despite their small size, they possess immense gravitational fields. Many neutron stars rotate very rapidly and emit beams of electromagnetic radiation. If these beams sweep across Earth, they are observed as pulsars, characterized by their regular pulses of radio waves or other radiation. Neutron stars can also exist in binary systems with other stars or neutron stars, leading to phenomena like X-ray bursts or the formation of black holes. They are crucial objects for understanding extreme physics, including gravity, nuclear matter, and the evolution of stars.