Planets around neutron stars!

Planets have been found around neutron stars. (link)

An article at space.com discusses how planets may form in the aftermath of a supernova leading to the formation of a neutron star.  Supernovas are notoriously violent, so you’d expect the space around the neutron star remnant to have been swept clear of any existing planets, and of the debris that might form new planets.

In effect, when a supernova occurs, a shock wave causes the outer layers of the star to explode away from the core into space.  Not all the material is pushed out at the same speed, and some of it falls back toward the star.

Some of the time, the matter will form a disc around the neutron star that remains, and this disc will coalesce into planets.

Planet formation around neutron stars would work similar to young stars, except that rocky planets would be favored over gas giants and the entire process would happen more quickly.

One reason for this is that material in the debris disk of neutron stars is more chemically evolved than material created in younger stars.

“The stuff that explodes from a supernova has all been processed through the nuclear engine in the middle of a star so you end up with lots of heavy elements,” said study team member David Kaplan, also from MIT.

And these would not be pleasant places to live, from our point of view:

Despite being rocky, pulsar planets would be permanently strafed by high-energy radiation, so there’s little chance of life evolving on them, scientists say. At least not the carbon-based life found on Earth.

Nevertheless, they might be prized for the heavy metals that could be mined from them. 

Indeed, such a planet might be a wonderful setting for a science-fiction story.  Any humans on such a planet would have to deal with intense radiation from the neutron star, as well as the dangers of working in mines.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 6th, 2006 at 11:25 am and is filed under Vox Populi. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. | 88 views | Trackback | Print this page |

| More from Karl Lembke