Besides being a point of light, a star is a luminous, spherical mass of plasma, enough to hold itself together under its own gravity. On its own, though, gravitational rounding isn't enough. What ...

Neutron stars are ultra-dense star remnants made up primarily of nucleons (i.e., protons and neutrons). Over the course of ...

Collision of Two Neutron Stars Billions of Years Ago Made Enough Gold and Uranium To Fill Earth's Oceans, Says Study Billions of years ago, deep down in the cosmos, two neutron stars began their ...

Neutron stars are formed when giant stars run out of fuel. Their internal pressure is no longer sufficient to fight gravity, and the resulting collapse and supernova explosion leaves a tiny core, with ...

Primordial nucleosynthesis during the early universe generated hydrogen, helium, and minor lithium-7 before the cosmos cooled, halting further fusion. Stellar interiors synthesize elements up to iron ...

When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. A rupture in the crust of a highly magnetized neutron star, shown here in an artist’s rendering, ...

Artist’s impression of the powerful winds blowing from the bright X-ray source GX13+1. The X-rays are coming from a disc of hot matter, known as an accretion disc, that is gradually spiralling down to ...

Quantum computing and neutron star physics are converging on the same hard problem: how to describe matter when gravity and ...

A rapidly spinning neutron star orbits a smaller, helium-rich star very closely. This unique pair formed when a larger star exploded, leaving behind the neutron star which then interacted with its ...

"It's pretty incredible to think that some of the heavy elements all around us, like the precious metals in our phones and computers, are produced in these crazy extreme environments." Scientists have ...