Neutron star

Thesis Statement: During their existence, stars form when the density of interstellar gas and dust, which form molecular clouds, reaches a certain point, and die by collapsing and turning into a white dwarf or a neutron star. Stars can fail and become a brown dwarf. Stars form when the density of the concentration of molecular clouds collapses and reaches a certain point. These regions are usually extremely cold and contain carbon and hydrogen. However, not all materials from the clouds form stars. Some of the material can form planets, asteroids, comets, or remain as dust. There are different kinds of stars in space, including neutron stars, white dwarfs, and brown dwarfs. Neutron stars come from collapsed cores of stars. White dwarfs are stellar remnants that is mostly made up…

The repeating nature of one FRB (FRB121102) has ruled out the catastrophic models, unless this event is of an origin distinct from all other FRBs. I explored the possibility of FRBs being created by the infall of asteroids onto neutron stars. If there is an asteroid belt around a neutron star, then a chance infall of an asteroid from the belt to the neutron star would give rise to a non-repeating FRB. On the other hand, if a neutron star passes through an asteroid belt around another star, then…

In this short essay, I will be discussing the differences between Nuclear Fission and Nuclear Fusion. I will discuss each type of reaction and how they are related to the energy industry. I will also discuss why only fission reactors are currently used for nuclear power production and what the future holds for both nuclear fission and fusion. By definition, nuclear fission is the splitting of an atom into two smaller nuclei with the release of energy. Fission does not normally occur naturally in…

Neutrinos are one of the most abundant particles in the universe second only to photons, yet they are one of the most elusive particles known to man. The neutrino is essentially a near massless subatomic particle possessing a neutral charge. Neutrinos scarcely interact with normal matter as a consequence of having a neutral charge and a mass of almost zero. There are three flavors of neutrinos: electron, tau, and muon; many neutrinos oscillate between these flavors. Neutrinos can be produced in…

A supernova takes place when, first, nuclear fusion stops, then the layers of the sun fall inward towards the iron core at light speed and finally bounce off the core and explode. (Stellar Death) During nuclear fission chain reactions take place. “A chain reaction refers to a process in which neutrons released in fission produce an additional fission in at least one further nucleus. This nucleus in turn produces neutrons, and the process repeats.” (Nuclear Chain Reactions) The two “types” of…

Fission was used in the original atomic bombs, and fusion is most commonly used today. This is due to the fact that the amount of energy that can be released from fission is limited, whereas fusion can theoretically release an unlimited amount of energy. Fusion is the same type of reaction that occurs on stars, thus obviously very powerful. Fusion occurs when two atoms are “fused” together and release a stray neutron. Thermonuclear bombs are much more powerful, and produce significantly greater…

Fusion is the process of bringing together of small high energy nuclei and creating energy from their fusion. An example of Nuclear Fusion could be perhaps if a Deuterium and a Tritium collide together, it would create a Helium particle, a neutron and an large quantity of energy. Nuclear Fusion is very desirable because of its very nice benefits such as it would run better and cleaner. Nuclear Fission emits dangerous nuclear waste unlike Fusion which just releases Helium and a neutron. The big…

extremely high temperature. At 10-34 seconds the singularity had gone through a very fast transformation from a point smaller than a proton to the size of a pea in about a fraction of a second. As the universe expanded it started to cool and energy was converted into mass, according to Einstein’s equation E=mc2, and particles such as quarks, electrons and antiquarks and anti-electrons were formed. Whilst particles of matter and antimatter bumped into each other and annihilated each other, not…

released is equal to what would take the Sun nearly ten-billion years to produce. There is no other process in the universe able to produce this much energy (Bhat, 2011). Additionally, if a GRB was able to distribute itself in all directions equally, such as the way a star does, its luminosity would be that of the combined brightness of a million galaxies such as our Milky Way, albeit briefly (Bennett et al.,…

Just twenty years ago, physicists were starting to recognize that protons and neutrons are not elementary particles. Instead, they appeared to be composed of puzzling objects called “quarks.” A quark is now defined as an elementary particle that has an electrical charge equal to 1/3 or 2/3 that of an electron or proton (Riordan 608-609). There are six forms of quarks, known as flavors: up, down, strange, charm, top, and bottom. Up and down quarks are normally stable and are the most common in…