THE MOST FASCINATING OBJECTS IN OUR UNIVERSE

A case can be made that us...humans...Homo sapiens are the most fascinating objects in our Universe.  We are the only intelligent living creatures, for extraterrestrials remain undetected.

Also, too, Black Holes are fascinating objects.   They were suggested by Karl Schwarzschild in 1916, but the first actual publication was by David Finkelstein in 1958.  Black Holes are probably at the center of all the 100 billion or so galaxies, our Milky Way galaxy probably has a 100 million of them, and during Big Bang countless others also formed and are lurking around unseen.  Any object reaching the event horizon gets sucked in and will never leave.  Which leads some to think that Black Holes could some day provide a huge source of energy and possibly be the key to lengthy spacecraft journeys.

However, let me advance neutron stars--which form when a giant star with between 10 and 29 solar masses collapses--as the most fascinating objects in our Universe.  Why?  Everything is extreme to the point of rdiculousness:

•  surface temperature of 600,000 Kelvin (the Sun is at 5778 K)
• what has happened is that the electrons combined with the protons to form neutrons, which make up 95% of the star, while radiating neutrinos
• typically, the size (it is a sphere) is about that of Chicago
• however, a matchbox-size volume would weighs 3 billion tons, which is what a cube of earth about half a mile on each side would weigh

• when first formed, a neutron star generally revolves swiftly, as high as 716 times/second, or, if you're able to stand on this sphere, you would be moving at about a quarter the speed of light, or 42 million miles/hour
•  there are probably a hundred million neutron stars in our Milky Way Galaxy, although only 2,000 or so have been detected
• this is more than a coincidence, but there are also 100 million black holes in our galaxy, for, as neutron stars decay, they usually become black  holes

• that gravitational wave, detected for the first time in 2016 by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory, came from a neutron star
• when two neutron stars collide, they can cause a gamma-ray burst, which, within minutes, give off as much energy as our Sun will in it's 10 billion-year lifetime

• this gamma-ray burst has been cited as, perhaps, the primary reason for the possible extinction of life on Planet Earth, even if this event occurs thousands of light years away
• while the alignment has to be ideal, the speculation is that there is a 90% chance that this will  happen in a 5 billion-year period

• it is speculated that the Ordovician extinction 440 million years ago might have been caused by a gamma-ray burst
• this could be the answer to the Fermi Paradox, or the Big Silence:  if intelligent life should be so prominent out there on other extrasolar planets, why haven't we encountered advanced civilizations?

A neutron star was first suggested by Walter Baade and Fritz Zwicky in 1933, just  a year after Sir James Chadwick discovered the neutron.  Chadwick studied under Ernest Rutherford, the father of nuclear physics.  Both became Nobel Laureates.  Chadwick, in particular, was the British lead for the Manhattan Project during World War II.  However, it took until 1967 when graduate student Jocelyn Bell (left) first found a neutron star, a rotating neutron star, or pulsar.

Seems unfair, but her major professor, Antony Hewish, in 1974 won the Nobel Prize for this discovery.  However, now Jocelyn Bell Burnell, she last year won $3 million for the Special Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics.  Soviet billionaire Yuri Milner created this award, and includes sponsors like Sergey Brin, Priscilla Chan / Mark Zuckerberg, Ma Huateng and Ann Wojcicki.  Here is Jocelyn today, a faculty member at the University of Dundee and Oxford:

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