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Why does “heavier” mean something when talking about a mass suspended in the vacuum of space? Does the mass and resultant gravitational force attenuate the sam
by samstave 4y ago
Why does “heavier” mean something when talking about a mass suspended in the vacuum of space?
Does the mass and resultant gravitational force attenuate the same ratio for small vs big stars?
Also, how do super dense neutron stars work - in the sense that atoms (and neutrons) are “mostly empty space” — are the particles in the atoms compressed closer together? Or does an atom of one substance at the center of a star have the same mass/volume as an atom of the same, either floating by itself or say, on earths surface?
- colechristensen 4y ago"Weight" words and "mass" words get used interchangeably because it usually becomes obvious which one is meant based on context. Here, obviously we're talking about stellar mass. You can't really talk about the "volume" of an atom because the distance between one atom and the next closest atom really depends on the bulk material and isn't just atoms sorted into their one fixed size but is a balance of various forces. A neutron star isn't made of atoms, but is, in a sense, one enormous atom or just a nucleus (but it's more complex than that). Mostly neutrons with some electrons and protons mixed in not separated into atoms which repel each other but in a super dense fluid of particles packed about as closely as particles in the nucleus of a normal atom. http://astro.vaporia.com/start/neutronmatter.html http://astro.vaporia.com/start/neutronmatter.html