The extreme physics of neutron stars

中子星是宇宙中密度最高的物体--甚至比原子核的中心还要密集。我们不能在地球实验室中产生如此高密度的物质。因此，我们不理解密度如此高的粒子的物理也就不足为奇了，尽管这样的理解是我们拥有完整的物质理论所必需的。因此，拟议中的研究的主旨是通过观察和研究银河系中子星的性质来了解致密物质，并在此基础上了解基本的粒子物理。为了实现这一点，我们提出了一个发现和研究中子星的计划。

Neutron stars are the densest objects in the universe -- denser, even, than the center of atomic nuclei.  We cannot produce matter of such high density in terrestrial laboratories.    It is not surprising, therefore, that we do not understand the physics of particles at such high densities, even though such understanding is fundamentally required for us to have a complete theory of matter.   The thrust of the proposed research is, thus, to learn about dense matter and, in doing so, fundamental particle physics, by observing and studying the properties of neutron stars in the Milky Way Galaxy.  To accomplish this, we propose a program to discover and study neutron stars.