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Does the Density of a Neutron Star Change with Mass?

-- Heraldo Henrique Felix de Moraes | August 9, 2021

Question:

What is the lowest density of a Neutron Star?

Hi, I saw in some articles that a teaspoon of material from a neutron star would weigh about 100 million tons and in other articles 1 billion tons, so I was in doubt what the density of a neutron star would be. ? From the least massive to the most massive.
In some of these articles I saw a demonstration of the interior of a Neutron Star, and in them on the surface, according to these articles, the density is 10 to the 7 kg/m³ (10 to the 4 g/cm³ or 10 kg/cm³ ) on the surface, and in the core, between 200 and 400 million tons per cm³, I wanted to know if these values ​​are constant, or tend to vary according to the mass of the Neutron Star (since the more massive the star, the smaller its diameter ).
When Carl Sagan speaks of the Neutron Stars in Cosmos, he says that the density of matter of one of this compact object is a mountain per teaspoon, and that this is so heavy that if we had a sample equivalent to a sphere that would fit in the palm of our hands (obviously that no human being would be able to hold, I believe that no machine on Earth either) it would fall towards the center of our planet, it would make a hole and come out on the other side of the world, staying in this movement until the friction with the interior of our planet, until it stabilizes in the Earth’s core, but without leaving our planet’s interior similar to a Swiss cheese in the end. Taking into account that on the surface the density would be about 10 kg/cm

-- Heraldo Henrique Felix de Moraes

Answer:

The density of a neutron star will vary with depth into the neutron star.  The radius and mass of a neutron star does not vary significantly, though, having a radius on the order of 10 kilometers (about 6.2 mi) and a mass of about 1.4 solar masses.  Since the mass does not change significantly, the density does not vary significantly with the small mass differences in neutron stars.

-- Jeff Mangum