00:00Neutron stars, super heavy, super dense, extreme, gravitational, magnetic, hot, scary.
00:18They destroy planets.
00:21They can even destroy stars.
00:25A cosmic conundrum.
00:26They're very, very massive.
00:28But they're also really, really small.
00:32Tiny cosmic superpowers long overshadowed by black holes.
00:37Until now.
00:39Neutron stars have been thrust very much to the forefront of modern astrophysics.
00:44The world's astronomers know that something is happening.
00:47Something's up, it's new, and it's different.
00:50Neutron stars are the most interesting astrophysical object in the universe.
00:58Now firmly in the limelight, Neutron stars, creator of our most precious elements and life itself.
01:06Neutron stars, creator of our most precious animals.
01:10Neutron stars, creator of our most precious animals.
01:11Neutron stars, creator of our most precious elements.
01:13100 million light years from Earth.
01:14A galaxy called NGC 4993.
01:20130 million light years from earth a galaxy called ngc 4993 two dead stars trapped in a rapidly
01:37diminishing spiral it's like listening to the ringing of the cosmos itself the sound of that
01:50collision if you will imprinted on the fabric of space and time itself livingston louisiana
01:57the advanced ligo observatory its mission to detect gravitational waves generated in space
02:06gravitational wave is a distortion of space-time that's caused by usually some kind of very
02:14traumatic gravitational event events such as supernovas or the collision of black holes
02:21or massive stars 2015 ligo makes history by detecting gravitational waves for the first time
02:32100 years after einstein's prediction it's the signature of the crash of black holes
02:40it's almost like listening to the sound of a distant car crash that you didn't witness
02:46but you're so clever and the sound of this car crash is such a unique signature that you are
02:52able to use your computers to model exactly the type of cars that must have collided together
02:58then in 2017 ligo picks up a different kind of signal the unfolding of the august 2017 event was
03:09nothing short of extraordinary so the signal comes in and the signal is strange it has a long lasting
03:17signal it's over a hundred seconds less than two seconds later a gamma ray telescope detected a flash of
03:23gamma rays from that same part of the sky and very quickly the world's astronomers know that something
03:31is happening something's up it's new and it's different
03:38this combination of a long gravitational wave signal and a blaze of gamma rays
03:46acts as a beacon for astronomers
03:48when they saw this event they sent out a worldwide alert to astronomers across the globe saying hey
03:58we saw something interesting and it came from a particular patch of sky then all the chatter started
04:05amongst the astronomical community and everyone's starting pointing their telescopes at this one part of
04:10the sky within hours thousands of astronomers and physicists across the globe are frantically
04:18collecting data on this mysterious event
04:22there's not just the gravitational waves there's not just the gamma rays
04:26there's the visible light there's infrared light there's ultraviolet light
04:30and all these signals together tell us a story and this was the very first time
04:35we've seen these two multiple messengers at once gravitational waves and regular light
04:41so that was a groundbreaking moment for astronomy
04:48scientists realize this isn't another black hole collision this is something different
04:55when you see an explosion in the universe there aren't exactly a lot of candidates there's not
05:01a lot of things in the universe that blow up
05:03but the length of the signal is the smoking gun the collision of two black holes was quick this one
05:14was the longer slower death in spiral of two neutron stars spiraling in closer and closer speeding up
05:24and then when they finally collide when they finally touch releasing a tremendous amount of energy
05:30into the surrounding system
05:34the collision throws up huge clouds of matter which may have slowed down the light very slightly
05:40the light and gravitational waves travel for 130 million years arriving at earth almost simultaneously
05:48it's the first time astronomers see neutron stars collide
05:55they call it the kilonova and this spectacular cosmic event doesn't just release energy
06:03the aftermath of this neutron star collision this kilonova created a tremendous amount of debris
06:08which blasted out into space and this may finally have provided us the evidence of where some very special
06:14heavy elements are created through the destruction of a neutron star comes the seeds for the essential
06:23ingredients of life itself we breathe oxygen molecules o2 water is hydrogen and oxygen most of our
06:31body is made up of carbon compounds that include nitrogen phosphorus one of the big questions in science
06:39over the history of humanity has been what are the origins of these elements and it turns out that neutron
06:46stars play a critical role in creating many of the heavy elements
06:54most of the elements on earth are made in stars
07:00but how the heaviest elements are made has been one of science's longest running mysteries
07:06for a long time we knew there was a problem with making these heavier atoms things like gold and
07:12platinum you know all the way out towards uranium and really the most energetic thing we had in the
07:17universe was supernova explosions so they had to be created somehow in supernovas but when scientists
07:23ran computer simulations virtual supernovas failed to forge these oversized atoms
07:30in 2016 astronomer eto berger explained a potential solution to the mystery
07:43if you open any one of these books and flip to the page that tells you where gold came from it would
07:48tell you that gold came from supernova explosions
07:51but it was becoming clear the textbooks were out of date
08:06to form heavy elements requires a lot of neutrons and so another possible theory was that the heaviest
08:12elements were produced in the mergers of two neutron stars in a binary system
08:17but at the time no one had actually seen a neutron star collision it was difficult to convince the
08:23community that this was a potential channel for the production of heavy elements
08:28the proof is to actually see this process happening in the universe
08:34the 2017 kilonova provides the perfect opportunity it generates thousands of hours of data
08:41scientists notice a pattern subtle changes in the color of the kilonova remnants
08:50in space when you have an event that is very bright it emits a certain amount of light and it emits
08:55it at certain wavelengths what we think of as colors different colors in a pyrotechnics display indicate the use
09:03of different chemicals and fireworks in the same way scientists can uncover the elements in the kilonova
09:10by the colors in the explosion as the kilonova turns red they realize it's the result of newly
09:18created heavy elements starting to absorb blue light as we watched this remnant change the explosion
09:26change in color expand and cool we could estimate what sort of elements were being produced
09:31the light from the debris shifts from blue and violet to red and infrared the color change provides clues
09:42about the presence of certain heavy metals
09:44well this neutron star collision this kilonova produced brightness and a color spectrum that are
10:00consistent with models of predictions that produce gold and platinum
10:05this model is called the r process short for rapid neutron capture
10:14that is a bit of a complicated term that describes how we make atoms heavier than iron you need a really
10:20neutron rich environment and as you might imagine a neutron star collision is a very neutron rich environment
10:27if these models are correct and this blows me away this collision this kilonova produced several dozen
10:35times the mass of the earth in just gold
10:46the 2017 kilonova not only reveals the origin of key elements it sheds light on the neutron star's interior
10:55the strongest material in the universe creating a magnetic field a trillion times greater than that of earth
11:13two neutron stars caught in a death spiral
11:26this massive kilonova explosion not only sheds light on the creation of heavy elements such as gold and platinum
11:36it also provides scientists with a unique insight into one of the most mysterious objects in the universe
11:44trying to imagine what a neutron star is really like really challenges our imagination it also
11:49challenges our theoretical physics we have to go to our computer models our mathematics to have some
11:54estimate of what this might be like
11:56of what this might be like
11:58now scientists don't have to rely on their imaginations
12:03they can use hard data from the kilonova to work out what makes neutron stars tick
12:14there's so much information we got from observing that one single event that one colliding neutron star
12:19pair
12:20now for the first time we have an accurate estimate of the mass of the neutron star and the diameter
12:25we can finally begin to piece together how neutron stars really work
12:30they calculate the diameter is just 12.4 miles
12:35one mile less than the length of manhattan
12:39nailing down any physical characteristic is really important and if there's going to be one the radius is
12:45a big one because from there if you know the mass you can get the density and if you know the overall
12:49density you can start to figure out what the layering inside of a neutron star is like
12:59for physicists the interior of a neutron star is one of the most intriguing places in the universe
13:06you have to realize that the conditions inside a neutron star are very very different than the
13:10conditions that exist here on earth we're talking about material that's so dense that even the the
13:15nuclei of atoms can't hold together with the neutron star you're taking something that weighs more than
13:20the sun and compressing it down to be smaller than a city it's so dense that if you tried to put it on
13:27the ground it would fall right through the earth high density means high gravity gravity 200 billion times
13:38greater than on earth imagine climbing up on a table on the surface of a neutron star and jumping off
13:43you're going to just get flattened instantly and just spread out on that surface so don't even think
13:49about trying to do push-ups added to the intense gravity are hugely powerful magnetic fields awesome x-ray
13:59radiation electric fields 30 million times more powerful than lightning bolts and blizzards of high
14:07energy particles for a space traveler this is not a good neighborhood
14:16if you were to find yourself in the vicinity of a neutron star it's going to be bad news first you would
14:23be torn apart by the incredibly strong magnetic fields then the x-ray radiation would blast you to a
14:31crisp and as it pulled you closer its intense gravity would stretch out your atoms and molecules into a
14:38long thin stream you would build your speed faster and faster and you'd finally impact the surface
14:46splatter across it and that process would release as much energy as a nuclear bomb
14:51if i had the choice between falling into a neutron star versus a black hole i think i'd pick the black
15:01hole because i don't really feel like being torn apart by a magnetic field and blasted with x-rays
15:11on a cosmic scale neutron stars may be pint-sized but they sure pack a serious punch
15:17the secret to all this pent-up power is what's going on below the surface
15:25armed with the new kilonova data we can now take a virtual journey into the heart of a neutron star
15:32first we must pass through its atmosphere now it's not like the earth's atmosphere which goes up like
15:38a hundred miles on a neutron star the atmosphere is about this deep and it's extremely dense compared to
15:45the air around us below the compressed atmosphere is a crust of ionized iron a mixture of crystal iron
15:54nuclei and free-flowing iron electrons now the gravity is so strong that it's almost perfectly smooth
16:02the biggest mountains on the surface are going to be less than a quarter of an inch high
16:06a quarter inch mountain range may sound odd
16:12but things get even stranger as we go below the surface
16:18this is home to the strongest material in the universe
16:25it's so weird scientists liken it to nuclear pasta
16:29as we dive beneath the crust of a neutron star the neutrons themselves start to glue themselves
16:37together into exotic shapes first they form clumps that look something like gnocchi then deeper the
16:46gnocchi glue themselves together to form long strands that look like spaghetti even deeper the spaghetti fused
16:54together to form sheets of lasagna and then finally the lasagna fused together to become a uniform mass but
17:02with holes in it so it looks like pennant this is pasta nuclear style simmering at a temperature of over a
17:13million degrees fahrenheit extreme gravity bends squeezes stretches and buckles neutrons creating a material
17:22100 000 billion times denser than iron but the journey gets even more extreme
17:30even deeper is more mysterious and harder to understand the core of a neutron star which is very
17:37far away from these layers which we call the nuclear pasta is perhaps the most exotic form of matter so exotic
17:45it might be the last bastion of matter before complete gravitational collapse into a black hole
17:55data from nasa's chandra observatory suggests the core is made up of a superfluid a bizarre
18:02friction-free state of matter superfluids produced in the lab exhibit strange properties such as the ability
18:11to flow upwards and escape airtight containers although our knowledge of the star's interior is still hazy
18:20there's no mystery about its dazzling birth forged into life during the most spectacular event the universe
18:27has to offer the explosive death of a massive star
18:41newtron stars manhattan-sized but with a mass twice that of our sun
18:57so dense a teaspoon of their matter weighs a billion tons
19:03mind-blowing objects that arrive with a batting
19:06newtron stars spark into life amid the death of their parent star they're the ultimate story of
19:13resurrection or life from death it's all part of a cosmic cycle
19:20stars are born from giant clouds of very cold gas those clouds collapse under their own gravity
19:28and the density of the core at the center of that collapse starts to increase
19:36a star is a huge nuclear fusion reactor the force of its gravity is so powerful that it fuses atoms
19:45together to make progressively heavier and heavier elements the star fuses hydrogen into helium once it
19:54exhausts its hydrogen then if it's massive enough it can start fusing helium at its core
19:59fusion continues forming carbon oxygen nitrogen all the way up to iron once the star has iron in the
20:12core it's almost like you've poisoned it because this extinguishes the nuclear reactions in the core of
20:19the star you fuse something into iron and you get no energy all of a sudden there's nothing to support the
20:26crush of gravity no radiation pressure pushing out means no pressure keeping the outer regions from
20:32falling in and that's what they do as the star collapses in its death throes its core becomes
20:39the wildest craziest and freakiest pressure cooker in the whole universe
20:47the ingredients are all in place time to start cooking up a neutron star
20:53if we're to scale up an atomic nucleus to be the size of a baseball in a normal atom the nearest
21:02electron would be way over in those trees but in the extreme conditions that lead to the formation of
21:08a neutron star those electrons can be pushed closer to the nucleus they can come zipping in from any
21:16direction and if the temperatures and pressures are high enough they can even strike the nucleus and
21:22enter it and they can hit a proton and when they do they become converted into more neutrons so in
21:30the formation of one of these objects the protons and electrons disappear and you're left with almost
21:35entirely pure neutrons with nothing to stop them from cramming together and filling up this entire
21:42baseball with neutrons leading to incredibly high densities
21:47with the sea of electrons now absorbed into the atomic nuclei the matter and the stars can now press
21:54together a lot tighter it's like squeezing 300 million tons of mass into a single sugar cube
22:05as the star collapses enormous amounts of gas fall towards the core
22:08the core is small in size but huge in mass
22:16billions of tons of gas bounce off of it then erupt into the biggest fireworks display in the cosmos
22:25a supernova
22:28it's massive it's bright it's imposing supernova are among the most dramatic events to happen in the
22:36universe a single star dying one star dying can outshine an entire galaxy
22:47and arising out of this cataclysm a new and very strange cosmic entity
22:55when the smoke finally clears from the supernova explosion you're left with one of the most real
23:00fascinating unbelievable monsters in the entire universe humans have been witnessing supernovas
23:06for thousands of years but we're only now just starting to understand what we've truly been witnessing
23:13the births of neutron stars
23:17but while supernovas are big and bright neutron stars are small and many don't even give off light
23:24so how many neutron stars are out there we know of about 2 000 neutron stars in our galaxy but there
23:34probably are many many more i'm talking about tens of millions in the milky way alone and certainly
23:39billions throughout the universe neutron stars may be small but some give themselves away shooting beams
23:50across the universe unmistakable pulsing strobes of a cosmic lighthouse
24:04our knowledge of neutron stars is expanding fast
24:23but we didn't even know they existed until a lucky discovery just over 50 years ago
24:28Cambridge the mullard radio observatory jocelyn bell grad student operating the new radio telescope
24:39scanning the sky doing all sorts of cool astronomy stuff and sees what she calls a bit of scruff in the
24:45data this scruff is a short but constantly repeating burst of radiation originating a thousand light years from
24:55earth it's so stable and regular that bell is convinced there's something wrong with her telescope
25:03she returns to that spot and finds a repeating regular signal a single point in the sky that is
25:12flashing at us continually saying hi hi hi blip blip blip boom boom boom pulse pulse pulse nothing that we
25:24know of in the universe has such a steady perfectly spaced in time pulse it seems so perfect
25:32that it must have been artificial it looks like someone is making that but it turns out it's not a
25:39person but a thing what she discovered is called a pulsar
25:47a pulsar is a type of rapidly spinning neutron star
25:51neutron stars had been theorized in the 1930s but were thought to be too faint to be detected
26:02neutron stars were hypothesized to exist but not really taken seriously it was just uh oh that's cute
26:12maybe they're out there but probably not the signal bell detected seemed like something from science fiction
26:21no one had ever seen this in astronomy before and some people even speculated that it was an alien
26:27signal she even called them lgm objects little green men but then bell found a second signal
26:36little green men went back to being fiction and pulsars became science fact the discovery of pulsars came
26:47out of the blue nobody was expecting this so it was a an amazing breakthrough really important
26:56pulsars pulse because they're born to spin
26:59they burst into life as their parent star collapses during a supernova
27:08any object at all that is undergoing any sort of compression event if it has any initial angular
27:15momentum at all it will eventually end up spinning as the star shrinks it spins faster and faster
27:24they spin so quickly because the earth-sized core of a massive star collapsed to something as small as
27:34a city so because the size of the object became so much smaller the rate of spin had to increase by a
27:42tremendous amount neutron stars can spin really really fast their surface is moving so fast it's moving at
27:50about 20 percent the speed of light in some cases so if you were to get on the neutron star ride no
27:57pregnant women no bad backs no heart issues keep your arms and legs inside the ride at all times because
28:04they are about to be obliterated and as they spin they generate flashing beams of energy
28:13this beam is like a lighthouse beam you see these periodic flashes many times per second so every time you see
28:20it beam beam beam beam these beams are the pulsars calling card they're generated by the elemental chaos
28:29raging inside a neutron star although the star is predominantly a ball of neutrons the crust is
28:37sprinkled with protons and electrons spinning hundreds of times a second generating an incredible magnetic field
28:44and with the strong magnetic field you can create strong electric fields and the electric and magnetic
28:51fields can work off of each other and become radiation these neutron stars send jets beams of radiation
29:01out of their spinning poles and if their spinning pole is misaligned if they're a little bit tilted
29:07this beam will make circles across the universe and if we're in the path of one of these circles we'll see
29:15a flash a flash just like if you're on a ship and you observe a distant lighthouse in a foggy night
29:22you can see pulsars across the vast expanse of space because they are immensely powerful beams of light
29:29but sometimes pulsars get an extra push that accelerates the spin even more the way you make
29:38it spin even faster is by subsequently dumping more material onto it that's called accretion and you end
29:44up spinning it up even faster than it was already spinning like stellar vampires pulsars are ready to suck
29:51the life out of any objects that stray too close gravity is bringing that material in which means that any spin
29:58it has is accelerated it spins faster and faster these millisecond pulsars spin at around 700
30:06revolutions per second they are the ultimate kitchen blender they will chop they will slice they will
30:13even julienne fry so what stops neutron stars from simply tearing themselves apart neutron stars are
30:24incredibly exotic objects with immense immense forces that bind them together and so they can be held
30:31rigid even against these incredibly fast rotation speeds they have incredibly strong gravity and this
30:40is what allows them to hold together even though they're spinning around so fast
30:44the speed of the spin is hard to imagine
30:52on earth a day is 24 hours long on a neutron star it's a 700th of a second long super speeding pulsars are
31:02not the only weird stars that scientists are coming to grips with there is one other type of neutron star
31:08that has the most powerful magnetic field in the universe this magnetic monster is called a magnetar
31:22that's amazing i mean you've got this incredibly dense object and suddenly it's spinning faster it happens
31:50instantly they'll suddenly change frequency it would take an amazing amount of power to do that
31:56what's doing it these sudden changes in speed are called glitches
32:02one leading idea for what causes these glitches is that the core material latches onto the crust and
32:07this affects the way it can spin around but there's another possible explanation glitches could also be
32:14caused by starquakes this process releases a tremendous amount of radiation a blast of x-rays
32:22causes the face of the neutron star to rearrange itself and for the rotation speed to change
32:30these starquakes release energy trapped inside the neutron star
32:36sometimes the crust gets ruptured anything that basically changes the geometry
32:40geometry of the pulsar can change the rate at which it spins
32:46so what could be powerful enough to cause these starquakes
32:50it's hard to believe that there's any force in the universe
32:54that could deform the matter inside of a neutron star which is undergoing tremendous gravity but when it
33:00comes to a neutron star if there's one thing that can do it it's magnetism
33:04extreme magnetic fields within the star can get so twisted they can rip the crust wide open
33:12and so the surface can restructure itself and constantly reshape and just a tiny reconfiguration
33:19of the surface of a neutron star on the order of a few millimeters would be associated with an enormous
33:24release of energy the neutron star's immense gravity smooths over the star's surface almost immediately
33:34it's like the glitch never happened
33:40when it comes to neutron stars there is no end to magnetic mayhem
33:47meet the reigning champion in the universal strongest magnetic field competition the magnetar
33:56one in ten neutron stars formed during a supernova becomes a magnetar
34:02the thing about magnetars as is implied in their name the magnetic field on them is so strong
34:08that even somebody who is used to using big numbers like say an astronomer is still kind of in awe of
34:14these things magnetars have a magnetic field one thousand trillion times stronger than that of earth's
34:23this amount of magnetism will seriously mess up anything that comes close
34:27any normal object that we're familiar with if it got close to a magnetar would just be shredded any
34:35charged particle that with any movement at all would just be torn from its atom it would be just an insane
34:41situation magnetars burn brightly but their lives are brief we think magnetars these intensely magnetized
34:50neutron stars can only be really short-lived their magnetic field is so powerful that it should decay
34:56over very rapid timescales only on the order of a few 10 000 years it seems their very strength leads to
35:03their downfall that magnetic field is so strong that it's picking up material around it and accelerating it
35:10well that acts like a drag slowing it down so over time the spin of the neutron star slows and the magnetic field
35:16dies away during their lives magnetars operate very differently than pulsars they don't have beams
35:25their magnetic fields shoot out gigantic bursts of high intensity radiation
35:33but recently astronomers have spotted one neutron star that's hard to classify
35:37it behaves like a stellar jekyll and hyde so this particular neutron star is a really weird example
35:48it behaves both like a radio pulsar and also a highly magnetized magnetar it has the extreme magnetic fields
35:56it can have these magnetic outbursts but it also has this strong jet of radiation coming out of its poles
36:03it's almost like it has a split personality when first sighted in 2000 this star was emitting radio waves
36:11typical pulsar behavior then 16 years later it stopped pulsing and suddenly started sending out
36:20massive x-ray bursts the actions of a magnetar scientists were baffled we don't know if this thing
36:30is a pulsar turning into a magnetar or a magnetar turning into a pulsar one theory is that these
36:36x-ray bursts happen because the star's magnetic field suddenly twisted the stress became so great
36:44the star cracked wide open releasing the x-rays from the fractured crust a neutron star is the densest
36:52material that we know of in the universe and yet we've seen things that actually make it shift and
36:57pull apart this neutron star is actually ripping itself apart under the forces of the magnetic field
37:03if this is the case placid neutron stars turn into raging magnetars growing old disgracefully
37:12when you think about the life cycle of a human being we seem to kind of slow down over age become
37:16a little more calmer neutron stars do the opposite they can be spinning faster than they were when they
37:21were formed and the magnetic field can get stronger over time it's sort of a reverse aging process
37:27but these strange changes are extremely rare most pulsars are as regular as clockwork
37:36pulsars are normally incredibly regular you can literally set your watch the timing of their pulse
37:42and it's this stability that we may use in our future exploration of the universe you know if
37:48you're a starship captain what you need is a galactic gps system well it turns out neutron stars may be the
38:07star star's often compare the steady flash of spinning neutron stars called pulsars to cosmic lighthouses
38:19These flashes are not only remarkably reliable,
38:23each pulsar has its very own distinct flickering beam.
38:28Each one has a slightly different frequency, each one has a slightly different rate.
38:34Anyone in the galaxy, no matter where you are, can all agree on the positions of these pulsars.
38:41The unique signature of pulsars opens up intriguing possibilities for the future of space travel.
38:55We would basically be using pulsars to be able to sort of triangulate where we're at.
39:01And because those pulses are so precise, we can use that in a similar way that we use GPS satellites that are stationed above the Earth.
39:11Using pulsars as navigational aids is not a new idea.
39:16It was recognized by the NASA Voyager mission in the 1970s.
39:22Affixed to the surface of those spacecraft is a golden record.
39:26And on the plate that covers that record is a pulsar map,
39:29which in principle could tell an advanced alien civilization how to find Earth.
39:34Because it uses the position of Earth relative to 14 known pulsars
39:39as effectively a way to triangulate the position of our planet relative to all of these pulsars.
39:46Aliens haven't made contact, but NASA still uses pulsar maps.
39:52NASA recently launched a satellite called NICER Sextant
39:55that exists on the International Space Station that is being used to test these types of theories.
40:01They've used pulsars to figure out the location of an object orbiting around the Earth at 17,000 miles an hour,
40:16and they were able to pinpoint its location to within three miles.
40:19That's pretty incredible.
40:22By recognizing their position relative to known pulsars,
40:26future space missions could navigate the universe.
40:29Neutron stars are going to take us on this incredible journey.
40:39Something as necessary as knowing where you are in the galaxy.
40:42We could be many hundreds of light years away,
40:44but neutron stars can actually show us where in the Milky Way we are.
40:47I read a lot of science fiction, and I love the idea of being able to go from star to star, planet to planet.
41:02It's kind of weird to think that in the future, as a galactic coordinate grid,
41:08we might wind up using these gigantic atomic nuclei,
41:13these rapidly spinning, bizarrely constructed, magnetic, fiercely gravitational objects like neutron stars.
41:23Neutron stars have come a long way since being mistaken for little green men.
41:28Once overlooked as astronomical oddities,
41:34they've now taken center stage as genuine stellar superstars.
41:41What's really exciting about neutron stars is that we're at the beginning of studying them.
41:47We're not at the conclusion.
41:49We've learned a lot, but there's a lot more to be learned.
41:51From the humble neutron comes the most powerful, the most rapid, the strongest magnetic field,
42:00the most exotic objects in the cosmos.
42:04I love the idea of a phoenix, something actually rising from its own ashes.
42:08You think something dies, and that's the end of the story.
42:10But something even more beautiful, even more fascinating comes afterwards.
42:14I told you at the beginning, and you didn't believe me, but now I hope you do.
42:18Neutron stars are the most fascinating astrophysical objects in the universe.
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