Wednesday, June 12, 2002

X-Rays Probe Gravitational Field Of A Neutron Star


Neutron stars are formed when a massive star runs out of fuel and its core collapses. A supernova explosion occurs and the collapsed core is compressed to a hot object about 12 miles in diameter, with a thin atmosphere of hydrogen and possibly heavier ions in a gravitational field 100 billion times as strong as Earth's.
These objects, which have a density of more than 1 billion tons per teaspoonful, are called neutron stars because they have been thought to be composed mostly of neutrons. Although neutron stars have been studied extensively for more than three decades, their exact nature is still unknown.
"We are not even sure that neutron stars are composed of neutrons," said Divas Sanwal, also of Penn State, and lead author on a paper describing the team's results. "They could be largely composed of subatomic particles called pions or kaons, or even free quarks."
One key to narrow the range of possibilities is to measure the strength of gravity on the surface of a neutron star by observing its effect on X-rays from very near the surface of the star. According to Einstein's theory of General Relativity, attraction of photons by a star's gravitational field results in a lower energy of the photon (longer wavelength of radiation) when detected by a distant observer. The measurement of this gravitational redshift relates the mass to the radius of the star, and it will test the theories for the various possible forms of dense matter.

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