• Question: What is the difference between a neutron star and a white dwarf. i know they are both the remnants of dead stars, but is there a distinct difference between the two?

    Asked by frogdwarf to Charlie, Eoin, Jemma, Julian, Steve on 19 Mar 2011.
    • Photo: Eoin Lettice

      Eoin Lettice answered on 18 Mar 2011:

      Hi frogdwarf,
      This is a great question but I don’t have a clue what the answer is. Perhaps Charlie will know?

      Eoin

    • Photo: Julian Rayner

      Julian Rayner answered on 18 Mar 2011:

      Hi frogdwarf. Sorry, I don’t know – biologist, not astrophysicist. All i would do is look up Wikipedia, like you!

    • Photo: Stephen Moss

      Stephen Moss answered on 19 Mar 2011:

      Hi Frogdwarf
      I think Brian Cox said on his last programme that a neutron star is what you get when a massive star collapses, so you have this small but fantastically heavy star, could be only 100km in diameter but weighing two or three times as much as our sun. I’m not sure, but I think a white dwarf is similar but is the result of a small star collapsing, so it doesn’t have quite the huge mass.

    • Photo: Jemma Ransom

      Jemma Ransom answered on 19 Mar 2011:

      I think they both represent distinct stages in the life cycle of a star called stellar remnants – this is the stage after the star has run out of fuel and is heading towards becoming a black hole. During the white dwarf phase, the pressure inside the core until the star collapses – this results in the formation of a neutron star which then forms a black hole (obviously I’m a biologist and have got most of this from the internet, there’s some fantastic websites on this if you’ve got five minutes to spare!)

    • Photo: Charlie Ryan

      Charlie Ryan answered on 19 Mar 2011:

      hi frogdwarf im no astrophysicist – i studied aerospace engineering at university – but i’ll give this Q a go!
      As you said white dwarfs the are small remnants of most stars – this is apparently stars with a tenth to ten times the mass of our sun (i had to look that up!). It would seem to be simply formed as the stars runnn out of fuel. There is no nucleur fusion going on inside them – they are like the last glowing embers of most stars found in the universe. This makes them really common! It’s made up of a kind of dense plasma, where electrons and the nucleus of atoms are pushed together (even though they are oppositely charged!).
      A neutron star is made from different stuff – neutrons funnily enough! These are (as you may know!) the not-charged particles that are found in the nucleus of an atom. It’s formed from a supervova, the explosion of a massive star at the end of its life. The core of this massive star survives the huge explosion, and becomes a neutron star.
      I hoep that helps, although you will receive a better answer from some of the astrophysicists in the space section!

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