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Reasons why this is important: It is the first simultaneous detection of a gravitational wave and electromagnetic signal, and the strongest GW signal yet in terms of signal to noise (Abbott et al. 2017a). It spectacularly corroborates the reality of the GW detection technology and analysis. The progenitor has been unambiguously located in a (relatively) ...

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Yes neutrons can exist outside the atom (or nucleus). In free space a neutron will beta decay into a proton, and electron and an anti-neutrino on a timescale of 10 minutes. However, in the dense interiors of a neutron star, the electrons form a degenerate gas, with all possible energy levels filled up to something called the Fermi energy. Once the Fermi ...

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The creation of some very heavy neutron-rich elements, like gold and platinum, requires the rapid capture of neutrons. This will only occur in dense, explosive conditions where the density of free neutrons is large. For a long time, the competing theories and sites for the r-process have been inside core-collapse supernovae and during the merger of neutron ...

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Because its awesome (SMBC) So this guy called Copernicus suggested that the Earth orbits the Sun (not the other way round) - What changes? This guy Newton had a theory for how a mass responds to force, and how gravity works - So what? Another guy called Maxwell had this idea of how light could actually be waves of electromagnetic fields - does this matter?...

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A neutron star must have a minimum mass of at least 1.4x solar masses (that is, 1.4x mass of our Sun) in order to become a neutron star in the first place. See Chandrasekhar limit on wikipedia for details. A neutron star is formed during a supernova, an explosion of a star that is at least 8 solar masses. The maximum mass of a neutron star is 3 solar ...

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Just to focus on one part of your question. Whilst it might be possible for a neutron star to accrete material, or for two neutrons stars to collide, in order to form black holes, this kind of event must be quite rare (although see below) The distribution of measured neutrons star and black holes masses can be fitted with an estimated true distribution. Here ...

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I don't think you'll find a single agreed shape for a rotating neutron star, not least because we don't have an agreed single model for the equation of state of the material in a neutron star (which is more complex than the name suggests). I found one openly available paper (I'm sure there are more) which will give you a rough flavor for the complexity of ...

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A more historical/linguistic than physical answer: Democritus proposed that matter could not be divided infinitely, but that at some point one would reach a smallest possible piece, which he called atomos, for "uncut". He was entirely correct as far as we know. Before 1930 or so, we modern humans mistakenly applied his word "atom" to what we then saw as ...

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I think it is absolutely safe to say that all neutron stars spin. Conservation of angular momentum ensures that as they collapse from a massive stellar core the size (roughly) of the Earth, to something with a 10km radius, their angular velocity increases roughly as the square of the decrease in their radius (i.e. a factor of $\sim 4\times 10^5$. Thus, even ...

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The initial Fermi trigger can be found here, and the following sequence of alerts that were sent out by the LIGO Scientific Collaboration/Virgo Collaboration (LVC) and various electromagnetic observers following-up the event can be found in the GCN circular archive here. This doesn't quite give the whole story of the time line of events, but is a good start ...

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There can be no closer white dwarf. The coolest, oldest white dwarfs (3000K), would be rare, but are still luminous enough $6\times10^{-6} L_{\odot}$ to have been easily detected at distances closer than Sirius. At the distance of Sirius, such an object would have a visual magnitude of around 12-13 and would be brighter at near infrared wavelengths where all ...

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As Francesco Montesano points out, using the wrong mass leads to the wrong answer. Also, using the density here seems a complicated way to get to the answer; you could compute the Schwarzschild radius for the NS, and see whether it's smaller than its actual radius. Since the density scales as ρ ~ M/R^3 and the Schwarzschild radius as Rs~M, the density ...

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Yes, it is possible to calculate (within an error range) the distance of observed gravitational wave events. It is known that a variety of parameters will affect how the amplitude and frequency of the observed gravitational waves will change over time as recorded in the "chirp" event from the interferometers: the parameters include distance of the event, ...

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It would appear theoretically possible (to some degree) through extreme applications of recycling to trigger mass shedding in pulsars. Pulsars are rapidly spinning neutron stars, the fastest class of which are millisecond pulsars. The current belief is that they build up rotational speed through accretion, a process known as recycling. One study, Recycling ...

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The scenario you describe may occur. On the other hand it may actually be that neutronisation in a white dwarf is the trigger for a thermonuclear type Ia supernova. You may be misunderstanding the Pauli Exclusion Principle (PEP).The PEP states that no two fermions can occupy the same quantum state, not that they cannot occupy the same space or be compressed ...

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Yes, neutron stars might actually accumulate weakly interacting dark matter and this allows some observational constraints on its nature. Basically, the temperature and continued existence of neutron stars places bounds on the density and interaction cross-section of dark matter. A dark matter particle that does not interact with matter will just have its ...

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Yes, it's possible, but less straightforward than for "normal" objects. If the optical counterpart of the GW signal is located, as in the case of GW170817, the distance can be inferred by standard methods of observing the redshift of its host galaxy. If not, the luminosity distance $d_L$ can still be inferred because the amplitude of the GW signal scales ...

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It is believed that old pulsars may have their rotational axes closely aligned with their magnetic field. This would happen over a timescale of $\tau\sim10^7$ years (Lyne & Manchester (1988)). There are three sets of phenomena driving the dynamics of the alignment (Casini & Montemayor (1998)): Short-term ($\sim50$ days) variations caused by glitches ...

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The paper (section 5.1) discusses three possibilities in the context of a relativistic fireball model, where some of the kinetic energy in relativistic jets of material emerging from the explosion is converted into gamma rays. The gravitational wave emission is always "prompt" since any surrounding material is transparent to gravitational waves. In ...

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As it turns out, the fastest spinning neutron star found yet is a pulsar 18000 light years away in the constelation of Sagittarius which scientist catalogued as PSR J1748-2446ad. Pulsars are neutron stars that rotate, are highly magnetic and emit a strong perpendicular beam of electromagnetic radiation. This pulsar's speed is such that: At its equator it ...

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If we take neutron star material and somehow transport it somewhere for examination (say the Earth!), the results would be catastrophic. At say a density of $\sim 10^{17}$ kg/m$^{3}$ the neutrons have a number density of $\sim 6\times 10^{43}$ m$^{-3}$ an internal kinetic energy density of $3 \times 10^{32}$ J/m$^{3}$ (calculated using the relevant equations ...

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Certainly not a black hole! That would not be stable situation at all. The content of the core of a neutron star is the subject of much speculation. The possibilities fall into a number of categories. (i) An increasingly hard neutron equation of state, such that neutrons retain their identities as they are squeezed closer, but an increasingly repulsive many-...

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Gravity is only important insofar that it is capable of compressing the material to high densities. Whether that material is capable of solidifying depends on the competition between Coulombic potential energy and the thermal energy of the particles. The former increases with density, the latter increases with temperature. A dense plasma can still be a gas ...

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There is a number of issues with the question, but let me sketch out some kind of answer, so you get something out of it. The atmosphere of a neutron star is a topic that's a bit speculative. Estimates vary a lot. Regardless, neutron stars can have an atmosphere - sure, gravity is huge, but they are also extremely hot. Some molecules are bound to jump up a ...

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To be considered an element, they would have to have a positively charged nucleus. They don't. The neutron star is largely neutral. They would have to have a cloud of surrounding electrons. These electrons would have to share "orbitals" with other electrons around other, nearby neutron stars. That doesn't happen. Finally, at these scales, gravitational ...

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We have no way of identifying where the Sun was born, what the surrounding environment was, or where the Sun's siblings are right now. This is easy to see from some bare numbers: the Sun's current orbital period around the Milky Way is some 250 million years, and it's been around for some 4.5 billion years, making for some 20 orbits around the galaxy since ...

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The answer is: to a neutron star - possibly; to a black hole, no. The process whereby a neutron star is formed is known as an accretion induced collapse and is being seriously debated, especially in the case of white dwarfs that are born at the upper end of the "natural mass range" for white dwarfs and then accrete more mass as part of a binary system. An ...

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"made of a form of highly compressed iron called nuclear pasta," This isn't the case. The crust of a neutron star consists of (starting at the surface going down). (Picture from Watanabe & Maruyama 2012) Iron-peak nuclei plus degenerate electrons. Increasingly neutron-rich elements with higher atomic numbers (i.e. not iron) plus degenerate ...

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The HR diagram is an observational diagram. Whilst neutron stars could be placed in the HR diagram in the same way as white dwarf stars are, it turns out to be impractical to do so because the photospheric luminosity and photospheric temperature of neutron stars is next to impossible to determine. The reason for this is two-fold: (i) Neutron stars start off ...

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No complete answer from me, but some obvious examples of "hair" on a neutron star are: The temperature - both internal and surface temperature can be measured (in principle). These are mainly a function of the age of the neutron star. The magnetic field - young neutron stars have very strong magnetic fields that are probably an inherited property from the ...

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