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Daniel Reardon, Postdoctoral researcher in pulsar timing and gravitational waves, Swinburne University of Technology

What happens when matter is squashed to the brink of collapse? We weighed a neutron star to help NASA find out

NASA Sun Earth Shapiro
Artist's impression of a white dwarf star orbiting a pulsar and producing a gravitational time delay. Carl Knox / Swinburne / OzGrav

Neutron stars are some of the most extreme objects in the universe. Formed from the collapsed cores of supergiant stars, they weigh more than our Sun and yet are compressed into a sphere the size of a city.

The dense cores of these exotic stars contain matter squashed into unique states that we can’t possibly replicate and study on Earth. That’s why NASA is on a mission to study neutron stars and learn about the physics that governs the matter inside them.

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