2. Their masses range between 1.18 and 1.97 times that of the Sun, but most are 1.35 times that of the Sun.Thus, their mean densities are extremely high—about 10 14 times that of water. It’s been speculated that if there were life on neutron stars, it would be two-dimensional. In 1967, Jocelyn Bell, a research student at Cambridge University, was studying distant radio sources with a special detector that had been designed and built by her advisor Antony Hewish to find rapid variations in radio signals. Heavier stars often collapse into black holes. It may be that if the stars are light enough, that they will actually form a single, very heavy neutron star instead of a black hole. No, a neutron star is a highly compact remnant from the death of a star, typically stars on the order of 1.4-3 Solar masses. Neutron stars are the remnants of giant stars that died in a fiery explosion known as a supernova.After such an outburst, the cores of these former stars compact into … The Discovery of Neutron Stars. Artwork by Sandbox Studio, Chicago with Corinne Mucha . Neutron stars comprise one of the possible evolutionary end-points of high mass stars.

The term "neutronium" was coined in 1926 by Andreas von Antropoff for a conjectured form of matter made up of neutrons with no protons or electrons, which he placed as the chemical element of atomic number zero at the head of his new version of the periodic table. Neutron stars are made in supernova explosions which are giant neutrino factories. Once the core of the star has completely burned to iron, energy production stops and the core rapidly collapses, squeezing electrons and protons together to form neutrons and neutrinos. A supernova radiates 10 times more neutrinos than there are particles, protons, neutrons and electrons in the sun. Neutron star, any of a class of extremely dense, compact stars thought to be composed primarily of neutrons.Neutron stars are typically about 20 km (12 miles) in diameter. A neutron star is the collapsed core of a giant star, which before collapse had a total mass of between 10 and 29 solar masses.Neutron stars are the smallest and densest stars, excluding black holes and hypothetical white holes, quark stars, and strange stars. Neutron stars have a radius on the order of 10 kilometres (6.2 mi) and a mass of about 1.4 solar masses.