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First, strictly speaking a neutron star is not a nucleus since it is bound together by gravity rather than the strong force. Measuring a surface temperature for any star is deceptively simple. All that is needed is a spectrum, which gives the luminous flux (or similar quantity) as a function of photon wavelength. There will be a broad thermal peak somewhere ...

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You are neglecting two important facts. The first one is that stars, toward the end of their lives, return to the interstellar medium (ISM) a lot of their initial mass, but now enriched with heavy elements produced by nuclear reactions inside the stars themselves. In this way, younger stars which form from the ISM begin their life with a larger fraction ...

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A brief overview of stellar evolution can be depicted in the following image: (From here which says it is originally from an encyclopedia; click here for larger image). The heavier stars (top track) have very short life times (a few million years) because they run through hydrogen, helium, carbon+oxygen, ..., iron fusion in the core. Once a particular ...

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It is convention and laziness (and I'm as guilty as anyone). In fact cgs units should not be used (according to the International Astronomical Union), in the same sense as Pluto should not be called a planet. Both were decisions made by the IAU. In the case of units, the IAU unambiguously endorsed the use of SI units, except for a short list of defined units ...

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I think the assumption that radiation is required for a collapse in general is mistaken. Think about a cloud of gas. If it is going to gravitationally collapse it must have a negative total energy; if it doesn't parts of the gas will fly off. If it has a negative total energy then there is some finite maximum size for the gas cloud, where it only has ...

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A free dark matter cloud (without the presence of ordinary matter) will simply not "collapse" the same way a radiating gas cloud does. In both cases total momentum, angular momentum and energy are conserved, but in the case of a gas cloud the photons can carry away some of the angular momentum and most of the energy, in case of a dark matter cloud they ...

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The answer given by Kyle refers of course only to the surface or photospheric temperature of the neutron star - the temperature of the layer from which photons can escape to reach an observer. In these outer layers the relationship between temperatures and particle motions is more-or-less consistent with the "everyday" Maxwell-Boltzmann picture referred to ...

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Let's suppose the broadening mechanism is van der Waals or Stark broadening - something where the energy levels of individual atoms are perturbed. In this case you could use the following argument. Divide the line profile up into groups of atoms which share the same perturbation and treat each of these as a subpopulation with a different energy gap and ...

1

We do not know if the universe is closed or open, so space could very well be infinite. However, that does not mean that there is an infinite amount of space in anything. Such a conclusion does not quite make much sense in terms of a logical,mathematical (or even philosophical) argument. Take Zeno's paradox for instance: The paradox states(in summary) that ...

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The Jeans equations can be a bit tricky. Their simplest form (in cartesian coordinates, with no particular assumptions) is: $$\frac{\partial\nu}{\partial t}+\frac{\partial(\nu\bar{v_i})}{\partial x_i} = 0$$ \nu\frac{\partial\bar{v_j}}{\partial t}+\nu\bar{v_i}\frac{\partial\bar{v_j}}{\partial x_i} = -\nu\frac{\partial\Phi}{\partial ...

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It is difficult to keep track on these things, specially since quasars are also highly variable. Trying to answer the question of the post title, I found this example that sound pretty impressive: $7\times 10^{14}\,{\rm L_\odot}$, or $1.4\times 10^{41}$ W. The ESO press release refers to the kinetic luminosity, or the kinetic energy of the outflow per unit ...

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OK, let's try a back of the envelope... http://www.slac.stanford.edu/econf/C0805263/Slides/Budge.pdf states that the total anti-neutrino count from a supernova is on the order of 1e58 and the neutrino energy is on the order of 40MeV. Let's imagine all of these neutrinos would go trough earth, which is the worst case scenario. The nuclear cross section of ...

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