My Pet Neutron Star: the similarities between Bose-Einstein condensates and neutron stars give experimental physicists a way to study some features of the stars.
They're about the same size as Manhattan Island yet more massive than the Sun. A teaspoonful of one would weigh about a billion tons. On the outside, neutron stars are brittle. They are covered by an iron-rich crust. On the inside, they are fluid. Each one harbors a sea of neutrons -- the debris from atoms crushed by a supernova explosion. The whole ensemble rotates hundreds of times each second, and so spawns powerful quantum tornadoes within the star.
You probably wouldn't want one on your desktop.... That is, unless you're an experimental physicist.
thanks! that was really cool :) there was a similar, though less detailed article, in the economist recently, too.
http://economist.com/science/displayStory.cfm?story_id=953495
