- #1
cadillac
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Homework Statement
Mostly a bunch of extraneous information, so feel free to skim:
Large stars can explode as they finish burning their nuclear fuel, causing a "supernova". The explosion blows away the outer layers of the star. According to Newton's third law, the forces that push the outer layers away have reaction forces that are inwardly directed on the core of the star. These forces compress the core and can cause the core to undergo a "gravitational collapse". The gravitational forces keep pulling all the matter together tighter and tighter, crushing atoms out of existence. Under these extreme conditions, the protons and electrons can be squeezed together to form a neutron. If the collapse is halted when the neutrons all come into contact with each other, the result is an object called a neutron star, an entire star consisting of solid nuclear matter. Many neutron stars rotate about their axis with a period of 1 s and, as they do so, send out a pulse of electromagnetic waves once a second. These stars were discovered in the 1960s and are called pulsars.
Consider a neutron star with a mass equal to the sun, a radius of 13 km, and a rotation period of 1.2 s.
2. Homework Equations /Attempt at solution
I'm not sure, but I used T^2 = (4pi^2/GM)r^3. G = 6.67e-11, M of sun = 1.98892e30... Perhaps I'm not putting the right value for T? I've tried 365x24x60x60 since it was geosynchronous...
Here is other information I calculated that might help:
Speed of a point on equator of star: 68067.84 s
g on surface of neutron star: 7.8497611e11