Neutrons were discovered 90 years ago by James Chadwick.The concept of neutron stars was hypothesized around that time by Lev Landau,Walter Baade,and Fritz Zwicky,and it was further developed by Richard Tolman,Robert ...Neutrons were discovered 90 years ago by James Chadwick.The concept of neutron stars was hypothesized around that time by Lev Landau,Walter Baade,and Fritz Zwicky,and it was further developed by Richard Tolman,Robert Oppenheimer,George Volkoff,and other physicists.Neutron stars are astrophysical compact objects formed after the death of massive stars(more massive than our own Sun).According to current understanding,the typical mass of neutron stars is comparable to that of the Sun,while the radius is only~10km.As its name implies,the main interior ingredients of such stars are neutrons,but they also consist of protons,electrons,muons,and presumably even more exotic particles,like hyperons,kaons,or quarks.The field of neutron stars was bolstered by the discovery of radio pulsars by Jocelyn Bell Burnell,Antony Hewish,and collaborators in 1967[1].A famous achievement brought forth by the first binary pulsar,the so-called Hulse-Taylor pulsar,is the first-ever empirical proof that gravitational waves exist in our Universe[2].In 2017,the first binary neutron star merger was observed directly via gravitational waves(ripples of spacetime)and accompanied by enormous electromagnetic follow-up observations[3].展开更多
基金supported by the National SKA Program of China(2020SKA0120300)the National Natural Science Foundation of China(11975027,11991053,and 11721303)+3 种基金the Max Planck Partner Group Program funded by the Max Planck Societysupport from NSF Grant PHY-1806776a Sloan Foundation Research Fellowship and the Owens Family Foundationsupport by the COST Action GWverse CA16104 and JSPS KAKENHI Grants No.JP17H06358。
文摘Neutrons were discovered 90 years ago by James Chadwick.The concept of neutron stars was hypothesized around that time by Lev Landau,Walter Baade,and Fritz Zwicky,and it was further developed by Richard Tolman,Robert Oppenheimer,George Volkoff,and other physicists.Neutron stars are astrophysical compact objects formed after the death of massive stars(more massive than our own Sun).According to current understanding,the typical mass of neutron stars is comparable to that of the Sun,while the radius is only~10km.As its name implies,the main interior ingredients of such stars are neutrons,but they also consist of protons,electrons,muons,and presumably even more exotic particles,like hyperons,kaons,or quarks.The field of neutron stars was bolstered by the discovery of radio pulsars by Jocelyn Bell Burnell,Antony Hewish,and collaborators in 1967[1].A famous achievement brought forth by the first binary pulsar,the so-called Hulse-Taylor pulsar,is the first-ever empirical proof that gravitational waves exist in our Universe[2].In 2017,the first binary neutron star merger was observed directly via gravitational waves(ripples of spacetime)and accompanied by enormous electromagnetic follow-up observations[3].
