beecee Posted January 17, 2018 Share Posted January 17, 2018 https://phys.org/news/2018-01-massive-neutron-stars.html#ms How massive can neutron stars be? Astrophysicists at Goethe University Frankfurt set a new limit for the maximum mass of neutron stars: They cannot exceed 2.16 solar masses. Since their discovery in the 1960s, scientists have sought to answer an important question: How massive can neutron stars actually become? By contrast to black holes, these stars cannot gain in mass arbitrarily; past a certain limit there is no physical force in nature that can counter their enormous gravitational force. For the first time, astrophysicists at Goethe University Frankfurt have succeeded in calculating a strict upper limit for the maximum mass of neutron stars. With a radius of about 12 kilometres and a mass that can be twice as large as that of the sun, neutron stars are amongst the densest objects in the universe, producing gravitational fields comparable to those of black holes. Whilst most neutron stars have a mass of around 1.4 times that of the sun, massive examples are also known, such as the pulsar PSR J0348+0432 with 2.01 solar masses. Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2018-01-massive-neutron-stars.html#jCp :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: the paper: http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/2041-8213/aaa401/meta Using Gravitational-wave Observations and Quasi-universal Relations to Constrain the Maximum Mass of Neutron Stars Abstract Combining the GW observations of merging systems of binary neutron stars and quasi-universal relations, we set constraints on the maximum mass that can be attained by nonrotating stellar models of neutron stars. More specifically, exploiting the recent observation of the GW event GW170817 and drawing from basic arguments on kilonova modeling of GRB 170817A together with the quasi-universal relation between the maximum mass of nonrotating stellar models and the maximum mass supported through uniform rotation , we set limits for the maximum mass to be , where the lower limit in this range comes from pulsar observations. Our estimate, which follows a very simple line of arguments and does not rely on the modeling of the electromagnetic signal in terms of numerical simulations, can be further refined as new detections become available. We briefly discuss the impact that our conclusions have on the equation of state of nuclear matter. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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