Naked Science Forum
Non Life Sciences => Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology => Topic started by: Alan McDougall on 27/05/2016 04:13:10
-
What do you think beings living on a neutron star, would perceive, if they could look at what was happening on earth?
Time flow on a neutron star, should almost be static relative to that on earth?
Alan
-
A being living on a neutron star, at a temperature of millions of degrees would not see Earth at all - it would be shrouded in an impenetrable blackness at almost absolute zero.
- The time dilation on the surface of a neutron star would be considerable.
- But creatures living there would not be made of proteins, so a comparison of perceived time is meaningless.
- Due to the extreme energies floating around at these temperatures, any life processes might proceed at a prodigious rate.
Physicist* Robert Forward wrote a science fiction novel speculating on the possibility of life on a neutron star: Dragon's Egg (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon%27s_Egg).
*His thesis was on detecting gravitational waves...
-
I recommend Dragon's Egg as a very good read.
-
A being living on a neutron star, at a temperature of millions of degrees would not see Earth at all - it would be shrouded in an impenetrable blackness at almost absolute zero.
- The time dilation on the surface of a neutron star would be considerable.
- But creatures living there would not be made of proteins, so a comparison of perceived time is meaningless.
- Due to the extreme energies floating around at these temperatures, any life processes might proceed at a prodigious rate.
Physicist* Robert Forward wrote a science fiction novel speculating on the possibility of life on a neutron star: Dragon's Egg (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon%27s_Egg).
*His thesis was on detecting gravitational waves...
I know that they would not be able see earth, which should have been obvious to you. It was a hypothetical question not based of any reality.
Thus, would the beings held in the huge gravity field of the neutron star, live at such a slow rate relative to us of earth that the might see us as entities moving at such a rate, that we would be a almost impossible to observe, flashing blurs of activity?
Likewise if we could do the reverse the process and observe them, would we, as an example, have to wait for a thousand , or more years, before we see them take one step forward on its hypothetical legs?
-
they might see us as entities moving at such a rate, that we would be a almost impossible to observe, flashing blurs of activity?
General Relativity says that if you compared the speed of protein-based life near a neutron star with protein-based life on Earth, things on Earth would flash by. However, proteins are not stable on a neutron star.
Since life on a neutron star is pure speculation, anything is possible.
Dragon's Egg imagines creatures that are incredibly thin (due to the gravity) and extremely small (single cells visible under a microscope) and distorted in a North-South direction by the extreme magnetic field.
This novel imagines a lifetime lived far faster than human lifetimes, so that an entire civilization develops and creates space flight by the time a human spacecraft explores a small part of the neutron star. (Lifting a spacecraft off a neutron star would require technologies far beyond anything humans have built; we can barely get loads off the Earth.)
If you want to speculate, I recommend reading Dragon's Egg - written by someone who understands the physics (as far as anyone does).
-
And don't put your nose too near the glass. [;D]