No hills on a neutron star
Date Created: 2024/04/11
Every time I trudge up a hill while walking the dogs I am reminded that there are no hills or mountains on neutron stars. The surface of a neutron star is the smoothest known surface in the universe. With a surface gravity of 200 billion times Earth’s, even rising an atom’s width above the surface takes a lot of energy. It is thought that the maximum deviation from a perfect oblate spheroid is of the order of millimetres on an object with a radius of 10-20 km.
The atmosphere is only a few microns deep.