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He said that the only thing that's left of a star after such an explosion, is a tiny clump of neutrons of unimaginable density. When the clump is formed, it is put into a rapid spin, forming a fast rotating piece of matter with an extremely intense magnetic field extending from it. In fact, the tiny clump has the original planet's magnetic field condensed as though the entire planet had been melted down into a lump the size of Manhattan with none of its magnetic field strength having been lost so that it is now concentrated a hundred million times. He said the field is so strong that it violently interacts with whatever particles its gravity attracts, whose atoms then become torn and distorted as the field rotates. He gestured with his hands to explain the process. "The violent distortion causes them to emit bursts of radiation," he said. "The intensity is so great that it can be felt at huge distances. A pulsar, as such a star is now called, can no longer be seen. It can only be heard..."
"Fascinating! Fascinating!" I interrupted him, and stretched myself in my seat to be more comfortable. I told him that I could program the telescope to scan for super bright radiating objects, or to look for super novas.
"No, don't bother!" he calmed me, "don't hold your breath. A super nova rarely lasts more than a few months, and there are only thirty erupting in an average year in a typical galaxy. As you know yourself, the Milky Way galaxy is so full of interstellar dust that you can't see hardly past your nose."
He suggested that one's chances of actually seeing a super nova were about the same as winning a lottery. The last super nova that was seen on Earth was seen in the 1600th, he said, and another one very far away, had been detected by telescope in 1981 in a galaxy 50 million light years away.
"Oh, that's too bad," I replied. "I was all set to find one." I added jokingly.
"Oh, nonsense!" he answered, "I got something far more interesting to show you than a super nova, something far more exciting. Have you ever seen a black hole?"
I didn't answer him this time. Again I quietly wished Natalia were present. If she only would come! What is keeping her?
"Suppose that a star is lucky enough to sweep up fifty solar masses or more, all into one coherent entity, during its birth progresses," the man went on.
"Wow!"
"Wow is right!"
I nodded, contend that I had reacted correctly.
"Imagine the gravity that builds up when such a monster begins to collapse!"
I shook my head. "I can't...."
"It becomes so great that nothing can escape from it," he said. He said that the gravity becomes so great that it effectively overpowers the expanding force of nuclear fusion by which the entire planet literally folds into itself, which in turn causes its gravity to increase to unimaginable proportions. "The collapse preempts the conditions required for a super nova explosion," he said. "The star, once a violent fireball, suddenly vanishes out of sight as though it left the universe, which in a sense it did at this point."
"I always wondered what a black hole was," I said to him. "Except you can't see a black hole, can you?"
He shook his head. "But you can recognize it by its effects. I can show you a ten thousand solar mass hole, if you're interested."
"You can? That's super! What quadrant is it in? Orion?" I merely guessed, just to say something, out of sheer excitement.
"Orion!" He grinned and shook his head, "No my friend."
It was at this very moment while he spoke that I noticed the strange metal object again that I had puzzled over at the pool. He held it in his hand! I was stunned. I stared at it, speechless.
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Stories about
War
from novels by Rolf A. F. Witzsche
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