maximum mass tagged posts

This is a simulation of gravitational waves from a collapsing Neutron star. Credit: Luciano Rezzolla

Astrophysicists have found a simple formula for the maximum mass of a rotating neutron star and hence answered a question that had been open for decades. Neutron stars are the most extreme and fascinating objects known to exist in our universe: Such a star has a mass that is up to twice that of the sun but a radius of only a dozen kilometres: hence it has an enormous density, thousands of billions of times that of the densest element on Earth.

An important property of neutron stars, distinguishing them from normal stars, is their mass cannot grow without bound. Indeed, if a nonrotating star increases its mass, also its density will increase...