Increased Gravitational Field of Neutron Star

How a neutron star has more gravity than its parent star?
- Ayaz (age 17)
India

The same amount of mass compressed into a smaller volume will give a bigger surface gravitational field. The reason is that the field decreases with distance, so on the more compact star with the smaller radius the field is stronger. At a fixed distance away, the field of the more or less compact stars will be the same. (We're ignoring relativistic effects here, not extremely important  for these stars.)

Mike W.

(published on 05/31/2018)