Neutron Stars: Crash Course Astronomy #32

In the aftermath of an 8-20 solar mass star’s demise, we find a weird little object known as a neutron star. Neutron stars are incredibly dense, spin rapidly, and have very strong magnetic fields. Some of them we see as pulsars, flashing in brightness as they spin. Neutron stars with the strongest magnetic fields are called magnetars and are capable of colossal bursts of energy that can be detected over vast distances. Check out the Crash Course Astronomy solar system poster here: http://store.dftba.com/products/crashcourse-astronomy-poster -- Chapters: Introduction: Neutron Stars 00:00 Electron Degeneracy 0:51 Neutron Degeneracy 1:28 Neutron Star Characteristics 2:24 Pulsars 5:56 Magnetars 8:15 Review 11:48 -- PBS Digital Studios: http://youtube.com/pbsdigitalstudios Follow Phil on Twitter: https://twitter.com/badastronomer Want to find Crash Course elsewhere on the internet? Facebook - http://www.facebook.com/YouTubeCrashCourse Twitter - http://www.twitter.com/TheCrashCourse Tumblr - http://thecrashcourse.tumblr.com Support CrashCourse on Patreon: http://www.patreon.com/crashcourse -- PHOTOS/VIDEOS Star Burst https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/details.cgi?aid=11447 [credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center] X-ray Images of G292.0+1.8 http://chandra.harvard.edu/resources/animations/snr.html/?page=8 [credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/Penn State/S.Park et al.; Optical: Pal.Obs. DSS] Neutron star cross section https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Neutron_star_cross_section.jpg [credit: NASA] Fermi Spots 'Superflares' in the Crab Nebula https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qDhdwgK218E [credit: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center] What is a pulsar? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjLk_72V9Bw [credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center] Jocelyn Bell http://blog.sciencemuseum.org.uk/insight/2013/03/20/1960-discovery-of-pulsars/ [credit: National Media Museum / Science & Society Picture Library] Beacons of X-ray Light https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6p2OGc6a_TQ [credit: NASA/JPL