Hello and welcome dear viewers and fellow
Casuals.
You are watching PrimetimeCasual, and this
- is A Casuals Guide To The Galaxy.
Join me at 28 Crateris, better known as Beta
Hydrae, for a look at one of the sights that
long range explorers like to see - a black
hole in a binary with a Neutron star.
A neutron star is the result of a massive
star going supernova, combined with gravitational
collapse that compresses the core to form
the smallest and densest of stars, excluding
black holes, hypothetical white holes, quark
stars and strange stars.
As the star's core collapses, its rotation
rate increases as a result of conservation
of angular momentum.
Some neutron stars emit beams of electromagnetic
radiation that make them detectable as pulsars,
as observed by Jocelyn Bell Burnell and Antony
Hewish in 1967.
What makes these stars so very useful is the
capability of our ships to utilize the radiation
and supercharge the FSD up to 300% of the
nominal output and therefore providing four
times the normal jump range.
There are thought to be around 100 million
neutron stars in the Milky Way, a figure obtained
by estimating the number of stars that have
undergone supernova explosions.
But if the remnant star has a mass exceeding
the Tolman–Oppenheimer–Volkoff limit of
around two solar masses, the combination of
degeneracy pressure and nuclear forces is
insufficient to support the neutron star and
it continues collapsing to form a black hole.
The idea of a body so massive that even light
could not escape was proposed by John Michell
in November 1784.
Michell correctly noted that such supermassive
but non-radiating bodies might be detectable
through their gravitational effects on nearby
visible bodies.
In 1915 Karl Schwarzschild found a solution
to the Einstein field equations, giving the
Schwarzschild Radius its name - after which
it becomes a non-physical singularity and
some of the terms in Einsteins equations become
infinite.
After a black hole has formed, it can continue
to grow by absorbing mass from its surroundings,
including other stars and black holes, forming
supermassive black holes of millions of solar
masses at the center of most known galaxies.
If you have a chance - go and visit Explorers
Anchorage and Sagittarius A* - a supermassive
black hole of about 4.3 million solar masses.
As of 2018, eleven gravitational wave events
have been observed that originated from ten
merging black holes, and in April 2019, the
Event Horizon Telescope published the first
ever direct image of the supermassive black
hole in Messier 87's galactic centre.
I hope this science-history heavy episode
was able to shed some light on two of the
strangest stellar objects in this galaxy.
You have been watching PrimetimeCasual, see
you next time and - fly safe!
