Neutron stars may be bigger than expected, measurement of lead nucleus suggests
Let me add some perspective here. This only became apparent to me fairly recently and it blows my mind. It&#x27;s something I hadn&#x27;t thought of before.<p>Black holes are relatively &quot;simple&quot;. I mean that you can completely define a black hole with 3 properties, one of which isn&#x27;t really relevant.<p>The two most relevant properties are spin and mass. The last is electric charge. The reason this is somewhat irrelevant is because electric repulsion is about 60 orders of magnitude more than gravitational attraction so it&#x27;s not expected black holes have a significant charge.<p>Neutron stars OTOH are arguably the most complex objects in the Universe. Why? Because you&#x27;re dealing with gravity, electric charges, nuclear forces and QCD such that there&#x27;s no equation of state for describing dense nuclear matter.<p>Probably my favourite variant of neutron stars is the extremely rare magnetar [1], the most powerful we&#x27;ve found has a magnetic field 100 trillion times that of Earth&#x27;s [2]. This field is so strong it would flatten atoms and rip electrons from your body.<p>So as much difficulty as we have of describing the nucleus of an atom (as referenced in this post), imagine a whole star of that stuff.<p>[1]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Magnetar#:~:text=A magnetar is a type,X-rays and gamma rays" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Magnetar#:~:text=A magnetar%...</a>.<p>[2]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.space.com&#x2F;magnetar-eruptions-sculptor-galaxy#:~:text=The most powerful magnets in,13" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.space.com&#x2F;magnetar-eruptions-sculptor-galaxy#:~:...</a>.