Re: Teeny Nukes

Actually, there are several pulsars that have periods of just a few
milliseconds, down to about 1.5 milliseconds as far as I can tell from
an
online search, and these are "solid" objects rotating that fast.  In an
accretion disk is matter that has pretty much been shredded already by
gravitational tidal effects.

As an undergrad, I was working on a research project doing computer
simulations to determine the maximum rate of spin for neutron stars.  If
its spinning too fast, the centrifugal "force" will tear the outer
layers
of the star off into orbit, and the whole thing starts breaking up.
Unfortunately I graduated before we started getting any real data and
the
student who was supposed to finish it pretty much gave up on it all.

Randy Wolfmeyer
Dept. of Physics
Washington University

On Wed, 13 Mar 2002, Alan and Carmel Brain wrote:
>
> BTW I talked with an astronomer not so long ago: one of the more
> exotic objects under study is a (suspected) black hole, with an
> accretion disk showing a doppler of 1/3c on one side, -1/3c on the
> other.
>
> I *really* don't want to think about the tidal forces on something
>  whose orbital velocity is 1/3c and whose period is in millisecs.
> "It's matter, Jim, but not as we know it."