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A habitable planet orbiting a neutron star must be between one and 10 times the mass of the Earth. If the planet were lighter, its atmosphere would be lost. Its atmosphere must also be thick enough to convert the intense X-ray radiation from the neutron star into heat on its surface allowing it to have a temperature suitable for life. [1]
A neutron star is so dense that one teaspoon (5 milliliters) of its material would have a mass over 5.5 × 10 12 kg, about 900 times the mass of the Great Pyramid of Giza. [b] The entire mass of the Earth at neutron star density would fit into a sphere 305 m in diameter, about the size of the Arecibo Telescope.
Further advances were made, especially to nucleosynthesis by neutron capture of the elements heavier than iron, by Margaret and Geoffrey Burbidge, William Alfred Fowler and Fred Hoyle in their famous 1957 B 2 FH paper, [3] which became one of the most heavily cited papers in astrophysics history. Stars evolve because of changes in their ...
Planetary habitability in the Solar System is the study that searches the possible existence of past or present extraterrestrial life in those celestial bodies. As exoplanets are too far away and can only be studied by indirect means, the celestial bodies in the Solar System allow for a much more detailed study: direct telescope observation, space probes, rovers and even human spaceflight.
In astrobiology and planetary astrophysics, the galactic habitable zone is the region of a galaxy in which life is most likely to develop. The concept of a galactic habitable zone analyzes various factors, such as metallicity (the presence of elements heavier than hydrogen and helium) and the rate and density of major catastrophes such as supernovae, and uses these to calculate which regions ...
The main trait that sets magnetars apart from other neutron stars is a magnetic field 1,000 to 10,000 times stronger than an ordinary neutron star's magnetism and a trillion times that of the sun.
Neutron star mergers are a recently discovered major source of elements produced in the r-process. When two neutron stars collide, a significant amount of neutron-rich matter may be ejected which then quickly forms heavy elements. Cosmic ray spallation is a process wherein cosmic rays impact nuclei and fragment them.
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