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X-Ray Emission from Pulsars and Neutron Stars

2009; Springer Nature (Netherlands); Linguagem: Inglês

10.1007/978-3-540-76965-1_6

2214-7985

Werner J. Becker,

Gamma-ray bursts and supernovae

The idea of neutron stars can be traced back to the early 1930s, when Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar discovered that there is no way for a collapsed stellar core with a mass more than 1.4 times the solar mass, M, to hold itself up against gravity once its nuclear fuel is exhausted. This implies that a star left with M › 1.4 M (the Chandrasekhar limit) would keep collapsing and eventually disappear from view. After the discovery of the neutron by James Chadwick in 1932 scientists speculated on the possible existence of a star composed entirely of neutrons, which would have a radius of the order ofR 3x 105 cm. In view of the peculiar stellar parameters, Lev Landau called these objects "unheimliche Sterne" (weird stars), expecting that they would never be observed because of their small size and expected low optical luminosity.