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A bug's life: Millimeter-tall mountains on neutron stars
- dark_star 5y agoA good science fiction book about an intelligent alien race that evolved on the surface of a neutron star, written by a physicist: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/263466.Dragon_s_Egg https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/263466.Dragon_s_Egg
- aatharuv 5y agoThat was just for sale a few days back on the Kindle store (at least in the US). Not sure if it still is.
- op00to 5y agoCame here to post this. Love re re re reading this book.
- finiteseries 5y agoThe Xeelee Sequence also features post-post-posthumans designed to live on a neutron star in one of the books about midway through. My favorite “people” from the series, second only to the Roman Catholic eusocial human hives of course. Truly the largest series I’ve ever read in scope, if you can make it past the terribad writing & characterization in the first books (and you will, the ideas are worth it) it quickly gets better. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xeelee_Sequence https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xeelee_Sequence
- Florin_Andrei 5y agoWriting is pretty dry, but the ideas are grand. It's worth a read.
- sjclemmy 5y agoI’m currently reading Flux. Brilliantly bonkers.
- Florin_Andrei 5y agoLife on a neutron star, as understood by a local, in their own terms. It's brilliant.
- bookofjoe 5y agoA supreme triumph of the imagination. I'm going to reread it now that it's been brought to my attention here.
- Beldin 5y agoI came across a synopsis of this book a week or so ago, read about the time differential and it got me wondering: what's the explanation for the time differential? We know that time passes slower in stronger gravitational fields. A neutron star has an enormously strong gravitational field near its surface, so time should move much slower there, not much faster... but in the book it's the other way around. (According to the synopsis.) Am I missing something?
- cfallin 5y agoThe explanation in the book is that neutron-star life is based on nuclear chemistry, whose reactions move much more quickly than our (electron-shell-based) chemistry, so everything happens much more quickly as a result.
- alexanderdmitri 5y agoRevelation Space by Alastair Reynolds also features an apparent neutron star in a cool way[0] Warning: Link is [probably] a spoiler if you're thinking of reading the book [0] https://revelationspace.fandom.com/wiki/Hades https://revelationspace.fandom.com/wiki/Hades
- willyg123 5y agoThis is an enjoyable and worthwhile lecture by Jocelyn Bell, who discovered pulsars: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-335gUOvdhA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-335gUOvdhA
- mongol 5y agoJust watched it, very worthwhile!
- thunderbong 5y agoAmazing. Thank you!
- jeffwass 5y agoOne “wow” moment that blew me away during my grad physics studies was the realisation that a neutron star is effectively one gigantic atomic nucleus.
- BitwiseFool 5y agoFascinating, do you know if protons can exist within neutron stars? That would make it each one an element, right? Or if not, they would all be isotopes of Neutronium?
- Florin_Andrei 5y agoThere are no isotopes with neutron stars because they are not actually nuclei.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- Thorondor 5y agoYes, it's thought that neutron stars are about 5-10% composed of protons and electrons. In fact, that's why a neutron star can have a magnetic field – charged particles are required to carry an electric current.
- ziotom78 5y agoHowever, in principle there should be a (perhaps very small?) component due to the inner magnetic momentum of neutrons [1], right? After all, they are made of quarks, which have nonzero charge. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutron_magnetic_moment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutron_magnetic_moment
- dredmorbius 5y agoThere's a gradient of material. At the core, a neutron star is likely very nearly pure neutronium, as other particles simply won't exist long under the conditions present. As depth decreases, other particles can exist, and at the surface there are likely free nuclei and atoms of elements, though my probably with low nuclear potential. Fission and fusion would be accelerated by the energies involved. That's a lay reading / bits of stray collected memories, though quick checking seems to confirm most of this. See: https://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/objects/binaries/neutron_star_structure.html https://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/objects/binaries/neutron_...
- swayvil 5y agoMISSION OF GRAVITY by Hal Clement. Addresses this very scenario. A fine fine bit of scifi.
- bookofjoe 5y agoA wonderful, wonderful book. Captain Barlennan is a fantastic character. Time to reread this magnificent story.
- keithwhor 5y ago> Neutron stars are some of the densest objects in the Universe: they weigh about as much as the Sun, yet measure only around 10km across, similar in size to a large city. I'm going to be the Hacker News pedant here and say that this sentence bugged me. Weight is a measurement of force. Mass is the word they were looking for.
- TheDudeMan 5y agoJust wait until you see the next sentence.
- emtel 5y agoWhy do neutron stars have "crusts", as opposed to behaving more like a liquid?
- ars 5y agoBecause the pressure on the surface is only from one side. It's exactly like surface tension in water.
- emtel 5y agoI don't think that's what causes surface tension in water. However, it turns out that surface tension is more mysterious than I thought. I thought surface tension was caused by inter-molecular attraction due to water being a polar molecule, which seemingly wouldn't apply to a neutron star. But this thread https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/2615/are-there-any-liquids-with-zero-surface-tension https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/2615/are-there-a... contains a reply saying that surface tension is an inevitable result of the interface between two materials, and there are no liquids (even superfluids, apparently) that don't have surface tension. In any case I don't see why we'd expect condensed matter physics to be generalizable to neutronium...