I love science, me.
But I struggled to get my head around this particular bunch of facts about Neutron Stars, which I happened across.
As you do.
A neutron star is so dense that one teaspoon (5 millilitres) of its material would have a mass over 5.5×1012 kg, (5 500 000 000 000 kg) about 900 times the mass of the Great Pyramid of Giza.
The resulting force of gravity is so strong that if an object were to fall from a height of one meter it would only take one microsecond (0.00001 s) to hit the surface of the neutron star, and would do so at around 2000 kilometers per second, or 7.2 million kilometers per hour (7 200 000 kph).
Always handy to have masses measured in Great Pyramids of Giza, I find.
“Hey – I have’t seen you in weeks! Wow – have you lost weight?”
“Why yes. I’ve exercising more and eating less and I’ve lost about 0.000000001636 Great Pyramids of Giza. I feel great.”
Anyway, to put that into perspective, here on earth 5 ml of water weighs 0.005 kg and an object falling from 1m would take about 0.1 sec to hit the floor and would do so at 35kph. Which you really should survive, depending on your landing position.
Personally, I’d feel less confident about coming out of a collision with the floor at 7.2 million kph unscathed.
Consider yourselves educated.
It’s a pleasure.
Just watch your back in the lab…