Phoenix Rising?
The Spitzer Space Telescope may have found evidence for planetary formation around neutron stars. In observations of the pulsar 4U 0142+61, located some 13,000 light-years away in the constellation of Cassiopeia, Spitzer found an orbiting disk of about 10 Earth-masses, located about 1.6 million kilometres from the star. The disk resembles the protoplanetary disks that are found around young stars, that are thought to lead to planet formation. If Spitzer did find a protoplanetary disk around the pulsar 4U 0142+61, it would represent a first: planets rising directly from the ashes of a star that went supernova.
Pulsars are type of neutron star that are formed as a result of the gravitational collapse of a massive star. When a massive star goes supernova, it collapses under its own gravity to a point where thermonuclear burning ignites the star in a massive explosion -- the supernova. Matter is ejected from the star at speeds in the order of 10,000 km/s. What remains after some supernovae is a neutron star -- a star made up of just neutrons, with a mass of up to 5 times that of our Sun, locked into a radius of up to 20 km. As you can imagine, this is an extreme star. One teaspoon of the stellar material for instance, would weigh about 2 billion tons. Pulsars are also sources of intense radiation. They rotate anywhere from hundredths of a second to 30 seconds, hurling radiation into space. If planets form around pulsars, the chance of life as we know it taking hold would be impossible.
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Pulsars are type of neutron star that are formed as a result of the gravitational collapse of a massive star. When a massive star goes supernova, it collapses under its own gravity to a point where thermonuclear burning ignites the star in a massive explosion -- the supernova. Matter is ejected from the star at speeds in the order of 10,000 km/s. What remains after some supernovae is a neutron star -- a star made up of just neutrons, with a mass of up to 5 times that of our Sun, locked into a radius of up to 20 km. As you can imagine, this is an extreme star. One teaspoon of the stellar material for instance, would weigh about 2 billion tons. Pulsars are also sources of intense radiation. They rotate anywhere from hundredths of a second to 30 seconds, hurling radiation into space. If planets form around pulsars, the chance of life as we know it taking hold would be impossible.
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Video source: NASA.
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