Black holes & Co. / Elementary tour part 1: Neutron stars and pulsars

Stars that are between five and forty times as massive as our sun end their lives in a spectacular way - not with a whimper, but a bang! Once their nuclear fuel is exhausted, there is an gigantic explosion called a supernova, in which the outer layers of the ...

weiterlesen...

General relativity / Elementary Tour part 2: The cosmic dance

In this new picture, there is no gravitational force that masses exert on other masses. Instead, there are spacetime distortions. Spacetime in the presence of a mass is curved. In flat, empty spacetime, small test particles follow straight lines. However, ...

weiterlesen...