USATODAY.com – Neutron star’s thick skin revealed
Observations of “starquakes” have allowed scientists to estimate the thickness of a neutron star’s crust for the first time.
Neutron stars are very dense objects that mark the endpoints of the lives of some stars.
Using a technique similar to seismology here on Earth, researchers estimated that the crust of a highly magnetic neutron star, called a “magnetar,” is nearly 1 mile (1.6 km) thick and made of material so tightly packed that a teaspoonful of the stuff would weigh about 10 million tons on Earth.
The study, performed by Tod Strohmayer of NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland and Anna Watts of the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics in Germany, was presented earlier this month at an American Physical Society meeting.
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