TIL that a neutron star is so dense that if an object was dropped from one meter above the star's surface, it would hit the surface at a speed of 7.2 million km per hour

Well, I guess "incinerated" might be one way of putting it.

But that implies turning you into "ash".

However, a neutron star would strip your body-matter down to particles that would go far-far beyond bulky "ash" or "incineration"...

Instead, I suspect you would become an INSTANT CLOUD BURST, broken down to individual atoms, and spread across an entire hemisphere of the star, in a single instant.


"Instant-gravitational-vaporization-cloud-burst"...

or maybe "instant-gravitational-aerosolization-cloud-burst" might be a more accurate description.

But there's probably no way of fully describing that in the English language.


If you think about it another way:

when you are 1 meter above that insanely, utterly, unimaginable compressed matter that makes up the Neutron star, there is an entire hemisphere facing you, and all parts of that hemisphere are pulling, ripping at you, at once, with astonishing force.

Again: matter from the star's north, south, east, west, are all pulling/striping matter away from your body at once.


A similar thing probably happens when you approach a black hole, in which gravity differentials would instantly stretch, pull, grab at your body, stretching you into long strands of spaghetti, as you approach.


But getting back to the Neutron star, a disproportionate amount of your remaining body matter/atoms would hit the surface directly below (since that's the closest point between your body and the neutron star).

So that closest point will "suck up" more of your mass against it.

That actually means, for the briefest of moments that little bit of your extra body mass that hit the star directly below, would likely become the TALLEST "mountain" on the otherwise nearly perfectly smooth surface.


But neutron stars do NOT like mountains, nor imperfections.

They want near PERFECT smoothness, and roundness.

So that slight bump you formed directly below, would again begin to instantly spread out, and flatten, until it was no more than an atom thick.


So now, the neutron star is probably "happy". It has redistributed and flattened your mass across one of it's hemispheres, once again reaching a near state of perfect smoothness.

But... it's not quite as perfect as before.

Now, the neutron star has one hemisphere that is slightly higher (by about an atom) than it's other hemispheres.

And so, all those atoms from your body would get pushed, and slid across the surface, migrated around, until they were perfectly distributed across all hemispheres.


In the end, all of your atoms will be smeared evenly across the neutron star's entire surface!


Even if I am wrong, and you don't form a cloud burst immediately, but actually do hit the surface directly below you, then again, for the briefest moment you would form an even taller mountain, but that wouldn't last.

You would still be pretty much INSTANTLY flattened and smeared like a pancake across the entire hemisphere, and then the individual atoms would slide, and redistribute themselves evenly to all other hemispheres.

/r/todayilearned Thread Link - en.wikipedia.org