Have a spoonful of neutron star.

Neutron stars are much smaller than our Sun. But don’t
let its size fool you. Neutron stars are massive
gravitational monsters, and orbiting one wouldn’t end up
well for our planet.

But what if we took just a spoonful of it and transported it

to Earth? Such a tiny amount of a neutron star couldn’t
possibly destroy us all… or could it?

This is WHAT IF, and here’s what would happen if a

spoonful of a neutron star appeared on Earth. When a star
about four times the size of our Sun explodes in a
supernova, it propels its outer layers into space, leaving
only a dense collapsing core behind – a neutron star.

Neutron stars are very, very dense. They could have the
diameter of a small city, but their mass would be about 1.4
times the mass of our Sun.

Of course, no neutron star will ever appear on Earth by

itself. First, you’ll have to grab a spoonful of it and bring it
back to Earth.

You’ll find the nearest neutron star, nicknamed Calvera,

617 light-years away from Earth. If you jumped in the
fastest spaceship we’ve ever built, it would still take you
over 11 million years to travel to Calvera.

I’ll have to fast forward here and meet you in the neutron
star’s neighborhood. And that’s where the real trouble
would begin.

You’d be trying to get your spacecraft through a magnetic

field that’s tens of millions of times stronger than Earth’s.
Your ship’s computers would be useless if they had any
ferromagnetic materials like iron, nickel or cobalt in them.
You wouldn’t want any of those materials anywhere in
your craft.

You’d have to dodge the electromagnetic radiation beams

shooting from the star faster than you can blink. And
then, when you finally managed to get to the surface of
Calvera, you’d be immediately vaporized due to the
temperatures being around 1 million degrees.

Celsius, Fahrenheit – at this point, would it even matter?

Any part of your craft that wasn’t vaporized, would be
crushed by the star’s intense gravity. But let’s not end your
story right there. Instead, let’s equip you with a super suit
that could withstand the insanely hot temperatures and
extremely high pressure of a neutron star.

And here you have it – a spoonful of Calvera loaded on

your ship. Now what?

If you tried to scoop the Sun with a teaspoon, you’d only

get about 2 kg (5 lbs) of it. The same amount of a neutron
star would weigh anywhere from one billion to six billion
tonnes. You wouldn’t be able to lift that spoon in the first
place.

And that’s not even the worst part. Because the gravity of
a neutron star is so intense, it fuses protons and electrons
together. Only neutrons are left in that stellar core.

When they aren’t buried down inside a star, neutrons

don’t last too long. After ten minutes, the scoop of a
neutron star would break down into protons and
neutrons, and release as much energy as the Sun produces
in two or three seconds.
Good thing you didn’t have enough time to bring that stuff
back to Earth. Leave neutron stars where they belong –
far, far away from us.

And if one ever comes a little too close to Earth, jump on a

spaceship and escape to another planet outside the Solar
System.