Question

(i) Why do neutron stars have a strong magnetic field if they are composed of neutrons, which have no charge?

(ii) What stabalizes these chargeless neutrons from decaying within the neutron star?

(iii) How do neutron stars cool down?

(iv) What can be learned about the interior of neutrons stars by measuring the temperatures of neutron stars?

Answer 1

1.neutron star is not completely composed of neutron.About 10% of the neutron star is composed of electrons and protons which still haven’t collapsed together to form neutrons. This together with the very fast spin of the neutron stars produce very high magnetic field.also neutron has intrinsic magnetic moment which contributes to magnetic field.

2.

When a neutron decays, it turns into a proton. inside of a nucleus, there is already a proton there at the energy level that is going to be the result of the decay, and so under the Pauli exclusion principle there is no room for an extra proton to come into existence.high gravitational field favours the firmatfor of neutron.so neutron decay is compensated by neutron formation thus neutron star stay stable.

3.neutron stars emits huge number of neutrinos which carry off heat and cool down neutron star.since neutron star are very hot and surrounded by cool space they loose heat to the surrounding.there is no fusion process inside neutron star so they continuously cool down.

4.neutron star have extremely high temperature. This is because it is born in the core of a large star, which is already very hot and then the core undergoes a collapse, that changes a lot of gravitational potential energy into kinetic energy of particles