Supernova Condensate is a blog about our place in the Universe. Of astronomy, chemistry and life in the big bad bubble of academia.
Invader Xan is a molecular astrophysicist and part-time alien invader, who spends life looking at very small things on very large scales, and trying to better understand the chemistry of interstellar space.
Tag Archives: neutron stars
The interesting thing about the Universe is that it’s big. Really big.★ With enough space and time, even the rarest events can find time to happen, with bizarre and unusual things happening as a result. And some rather good evidence for … Continue reading
The Fermi telescope, seeing the sky in gamma rays, has given us our best view yet of the high energy Universe. A world where bizarre events give out so much energy that it’s difficult for us to fully appreciate their scale. … Continue reading
I like when people give nicknames to things, especially when they’re appropriate ones. Even though seemingly a lot of people frown upon naming astronomical objects, a couple of exoplanets managed to pick up nicknames back when there were only a … Continue reading
Everything in the Universe likes to go in circles. Moons orbit planets, planets orbit stars, stars orbit other stars — and in each case all parts of the system are interrelated. The speed at which one star orbits another, for … Continue reading
Neutron stars are amongst the most extreme objects in the known universe. And I don’t mean extreme as in frontside 360 stalefish varial, I mean the kind of extreme that would’ve given Einstein bad dreams. Born in supernovae, neutron stars … Continue reading
So this blog’s called Supernova Condensate, but I realise I’ve never actually written about supernova condensate! Time to fix that, I think… Supernova condensate, often abbreviated to SuNoCon (which sounds like it should be a convention somewhere), is exactly that. … Continue reading
Supernovae, as I mentioned in my previous post, are among the most powerful events in the entire known universe. There are even a few different types — Type Ia happen when a greedy white dwarf accumulates too much mass, Type … Continue reading