Did you know that a hypothetical neutron star one trillion light years in diameter would weigh a couple of googol kilograms? That's a 2 followed by 100 zeros. A real neutron star of one solar mass (the weight of the sun) is about 40 km in diameter. Neutron stars are composed of incredibly dense matter (one teaspoon of the substance would weigh billions of tons).
How many normal neutron stars would fit in a sphere one trillion light years in diameter? First let X = the no. of neutron star diameters side-by-side that stretch for one trillion light years = 1/40 neutron star diameters/km x 9 trillion km/light year x one trillion light years = 9/40 trillion-trillion = 2.25 x 10^23 neutron star diameters. (The caret ^ operator means "raised to the power of".) Then the no. of normal neutron stars that would fit in a sphere one trillion light years in diameter = X cubed = roughly 10 x 10^69 = 10^70 (a one followed by 70 zeros).
The mass of one neutron star in this example = one solar mass = 2 x 10^30 kg, therefore the mass of a hypothetical neutron star one trillion light years in diameter = 2 x 10^30 kg/solar mass x 10^70 solar masses/trillion-light-year sphere = 2 x 10^100.
Friday, December 11, 2009
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