Neutron stars : Seen my way

Abstract

An unconventional survey is presented of the observable properties of neutron stars and of all astrophysical phenomena possibly related to them, such as their pulsing, clock irregularities, bursting, flickering, and occasional super-Eddington brightness, the generation of cosmic rays, of gamma-ray bursts, of jets, and of synchrotron nebulae, their birth, and their occasional transient appearance as 'supersoft' X-ray sources. The msec pulsars are argued to be born fast, the black-hole candidates to be neutron stars inside of massive disks, and the gamma-ray bursts to be sparks from dense 'blades' accreting spasmodically onto the surfaces of (generally old) neutron stars within " 0.3 Kpc from the Sun. Supernovae - the likely birth events of neutron stars - are thick-walled explosions, not to be described by Sedov-Taylor waves, which illuminate their gaseous environs via collisions of their 'splinters'.