Neutron Stars: Cosmic Lighthouses and Clocks

Neutron stars spin faster than your kitchen blender. Some rotate 700 times per second,

which sounds impossible until you understand what they actually are. When a massive star

explodes, its core collapses into something extraordinary. Imagine crushing our entire sun into

a sphere the size of Manhattan. That's a neutron star. A single teaspoon

of this material weighs as much as Mount Everest. But here's where it gets truly bizarre.

These cosmic lighthouses emit beams of radiation from their magnetic poles, sweeping across

space like celestial searchlights. We call them pulsars when those beams point toward Earth.

The magnetic field surrounding a neutron star is a trillion times stronger than Earth's.