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NASA's NICER Mission Reveals An Unexpected Neutron Star Surprise - Forbes

NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center

After typical supernovae, remnant collapsed cores of matter are left behind.

NASA / ESA

These objects — neutron stars — are approximately 90% neutrons, surrounded by shells containing charged particles.

NASA / GSFC / NICER

As they rapidly spin, they generate strong magnetic fields, accelerating particles and emitting electromagnetic pulses.

NASA/CXC/PSU/G.Pavlov et al.

When a pulse intersects our line-of-sight, we detect it: this is why some neutron stars are pulsars.

B. Saxton, NRAO/AUI/NSF

They are denser than atomic nuclei but cannot be too massive, otherwise they collapse into black holes.

Frank Elavsky, Northwestern University and LIGO-Virgo collaborations

Even with our most powerful telescopes in all wavelengths of light, neutron stars only appear as points.

ESO / E. Siegel

NASA's NICER mission, installed aboard the ISS in 2017, sought to change all that.

NASA

The low-energy X-ray observatory measures timing signals down to 300 nanoseconds and at unprecedented sensitivities.

NASA / GSFC / NICER

NICER enables measurements of neutron stars' sizes, masses, cooling times, stabilities, and internal structures.

Zaven Arzoumanian & Keith C. Gendreau (NASA Goddard Space Flight Center)

For one pulsar in particular,  J0030+0451, they determined its mass (1.35 Suns) and diameter (25.7 km) explicitly.

NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center

They detected "hot spots" on the surface and constructed the first-ever neutron star map.

ESO/Luís Calçada

They concluded that pulsar magnetic fields are more complex than typical, naive two-pole models.

CXC/M. Weiss

It's one step closer to the ultimate goal: discovering which matter states exist in pulsar cores.


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https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2019/12/16/nasas-nicer-mission-reveals-an-unexpected-neutron-star-surprise/

2019-12-16 07:00:05Z
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