What is the difference between quasars, pulsars and neutron stars?

Question

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Answer 1

A neutron star is a star that after going supernova, and most of the matterial has been blown off into space, will contain enough remaining mass to begin to collapse in upon itself. It exists mostly of ordinary atomic nuclei (protons and electrons) but the gravitational force will cause immense pressure that will cause the protons (positively charged particles) and the electrons (negitively charged particles) to merge and become neutrons (neutrally charged particles).

A pulsar is a spinning neutron star that has fissures in its crust (which is solid hydrogen, helium and other small elements) by which radio waves seep out. Radio waves are a by product of the fusion of protons and electrons. So, everytime the star rotatesm, a beam of radio waves is emitted in our general direction, much like a lighthouse.

A quasar, though, is an entirely different animal. A quasar is believed to be a small, very dense and rapidly rotating galaxy that shoots huge streams of gas out of its axis due to the massive angular momentum it possesses and gravity. It is also believed that they are caused by supermassive black holes.

Answer 2

A neutron star is the collapsed core of a formerly massive star that went supernova. It's a giant ball of neutrons, hense the name.

All pulsars are neutron stars, but not all neutron stars are pulsars. A pulsar rotates rather quicky (once a second or so, as fast as once a millisecond or so) and has an extremely strong magnetic field. Beams of radiation come out of the north and south magnetic poles. As the pulsar rotates, these beams sweep through space (think of it as a cosmic light house). If the beam intersects Earth, we'll see it as a pulse of radiation once per rotation.

A quasar is the nucleus of an active galaxy, where the central supermassive black hole is gobbling up stars and gas at fast rate, and emitting a lot of radiation in the process. A quasar (a name made up from the term "quasi-stellar") is very bright, but so very far away that they look like pin-points (like stars) in most photographs.

Answer 3

Ohmneo is correct, except for his explanation of the source of the radio waves.

When the parent star collapses its HUGE magnetic field collapses with it, consentrating around the small neutron star. The magnetic field funnels the materials left around the nuetron star to its magnetic poles. As the material gets closer to the pole it becomes compressed and heated to extreme temperatures. The radio singals are a result of emmissions from this hot plasma at the poles.

Sometimes when neutron stars are formed the process imparts very high rates of rotation on the star. If this is the case, and the magnetic poles rotate in and out of our view from Earth, we see this is a pulsar.

Answer 4

I concurr with Michael E. Other interesting stuff about neutron star is that they can work as labs to test general relativity and quantum mechanics. Recently there was a discovery of a double pulsar.

Answer 5

go here. They have all you need to know

http://www.livescience.com/

it is a great science web site