Here's your learnin' for the day, courtesy of Lisa, my co-worker.
She was sorting through some new children's books and came across this one:
The Mysterious Universe: supernovae, dark energy and black holes, by Ellen Jackson.
One of the facts was talking about a supernova and that its aftermath can create a tiny star; called a neutron star. "Normal stars are made of ordinary atoms composed of a nucleus with electrons zipping around at a distance. In a neutron star, those atoms have been squashed together by gravity so tightly that the whole star is like one big, heavy, and very dense atomic nucleus. A teaspoon of material from a neutron star would weigh more than a pile of a billion cars."(p. 22)
Read that last sentence again. A TEASPOON of material from a neutron star weighs MORE than a pile of a BILLION cars. That is hard to wrap your mind around.
Now, let me show you its size.
The White Dwarf (the arc shown above an approximation of its relative size) is roughly the size of the earth and is incredibly dense on its own. One White Dwarf star weighs (in total) approximately the same as 300,000 earths. The neutron star (blue dot above) weighs the same as 500,000 earths. (p.23).
Come on..tell me you aren't fascinated.
