Neutron stars - the material is so dense a matchbox amount weighs thousands of tonnes. Could a human being in a spacesuit walk on the surface of a solid neutron star of that density?
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WHITE BEAR
ANSWERS: 3
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I read that a piece the size of a marble would weigh more than the combined weight of everybody on the planet. So, perhaps if a spacesuited human were to land on such a surface, s/he would have been killed long before they could take a step by the sheer gravitational pull compressing their body. I'm only hypothesising though.
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Nice idea, but we (and the spacesuit for that matter) would be far too fragile. As gravity doesn't 'cut off' at the surface, you'd be pulled to little bits long before you got anywhere near putting your feet down. If that doesn't get you, then the surface is still at a temperature of 3 million degrees or so, and again the heat doesn't stop at the surface. If you can get round that problem, then if the neutron star is a pulsar, you may be trying to stand on a surface that is only a few miles across, but is spinning at one rotation every millisecond or two. I don't think our legs could move fast enough. And wouldn't that wear through the bottom of your boots quite quickly?
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According to my text books, a teaspoon full of neutron star material weights about as much as Mount Everest. The material can be that dense only because gravity has crushed it to the point at which the electrons of the atoms that made of the star were crushed into the atomic nuclei forcing them to combine with the protons creating neutrons. If a human were to attempt to land on a neutron star, its gravity would do the same thing to the human, his space suit, and his ship.
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