(CN) — The tallest mountains on neutron stars may be only fractions of a millimeter high, according to new data released by researchers from the University of Southampton.
Huge gravity on these extremely dense objects keeps the mountains so small, new astronomical models suggest. The new estimates are one hundred times smaller than previous thought.
Some of the densest objects in space, neutron stars are almost perfect spheres that weigh about as much as the sun despite being the size of a large city. But because they are so compact, neutron stars have a gravitational pull around a billion times stronger than Earth, squashing their surface features to tiny dimensions. Despite their size, these miniscule deformations are still called mountains.
Researchers led by PhD student Fabian Gittins at the University of Southampton in the U.K. used computational modeling to build realistic neutron stars. The team then applied mathematical forces to identify how the mountains are created. The research team presented their findings at the Royal Astronomical Society's National Astronomy Meeting.
By studying the role of ultra-dense nuclear matter in supporting the mountains, researchers found that the largest mountains produced were only a fraction of a millimeter tall.
“For the past two decades, there has been much interest in understanding how large these mountains can be before the crust of the neutron star breaks, and the mountain can no longer be supported,” Fabian commented.
While previous work suggested that neutron stars can sustain deviations from a perfect sphere of up to a few parts per million - implying the mountains could reach a few centimeters in height — those calculations assumed the star was strained to the point of breaking.
In contrast, Fabian’s new models indicate that such conditions are unrealistic.
“These results show how neutron stars truly are remarkably spherical objects,” Fabian concluded. “Additionally, they suggest that observing gravitational waves from rotating neutron stars may be even more challenging than previously thought.”
Spinning neutron stars with slight deformations may produce gravitational waves - ripples in the fabric of spacetime. While such activity has not been observed, advances in extremely sensitive detectors such as advanced LIGO and Virgo may one day allow astronomers witness this phenomenon.
The existence of neutron stars, which result from the supernova explosion of a massive star, was first proposed in 1933 by Walter Baade and Fritz Zwicky, according to Wikipedia. Based on an estimate of stars that have undergone supernova explosions, scientists estimate there are up to one billion neutron stars in the Milky Way.
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