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B Pulsars and Neutron Stars debunked?

  1. Mar 17, 2016 #1
    Now kindly pardon my ignorance but I hope one of you can explain to me how this can be possible.

    A rotating neutron star or pulsar have been observed to spin at between 10 to 700 times per second. Now before I proceed further I like to draw your memories back to the merry go round we played as children. Some of us kids would hang on tight especially the boys who wanted to show off and the other boys and kids would spin the wheel. As the wheel revolved faster and faster the kids would one by one get thrown off due to the massive centrifugal forces acting on them.

    These were just small merry go rounds of perhaps 3 meters in diameter and these spun even at the very fastest of around 1/2 round per secon. These already produced massive forces to fling us off. Now a neutron star may be 20km in diameter, the mass play no part in holding it together as the faster an object spins, the mass itself is acting in an outward direction increasing the inertia and being already in a rotational spin, these stars would literally fling itself out of existence as it disintegrates.

    How can such objects possibly by the laws of physics be physically possible? Are these stars real or are they the invention of some scientist who is trying to wave away the problem by coming up with insane excuses.
  2. jcsd
  3. Mar 17, 2016 #2


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    The surface gravity of a neutron star is huge - roughly 100 billion times the surface gravity of the Earth. So, while the centrifugal force is trying to pull the star apart, the huge gravitational forces are holding it together. These things are well understood and easy to calculate. Eventually, if the star spins fast enough, it will fly apart as you said, but this maximum rotation rate is above 1000 revolutions per second.
  4. Mar 17, 2016 #3
    Of course the mass continues to hold it together, all that mass will continue to exert gravity, and considering the [Newtonian] formula for the attraction of gravity is an inverse square of the distance, could you imagine how powerful gravity would be if you took all that mass and compressed it to 20 miles? There exist objects with gravity so stupendously strong that nothing could ever escape it, regardless of how fast it spun. They're called black holes and they make neutron stars look downright puny.

    Oh also, there are dozens of known neutron stars and pulsars. We can see them with telescopes.
  5. Mar 17, 2016 #4

    Vanadium 50

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    Is this question serious or just some crackpot nutjob out to push his own "theory"?

    You might want to lose the 'tude, bro.
  6. Mar 17, 2016 #5


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    They're real. Thread closed.