The extreme physics of neutron stars

中子星是宇宙中密度最大的物体--密度甚至比原子核的中心还要大。 我们不能在地球上的实验室里制造出如此高密度的物质。 因此，我们不理解如此高密度下的粒子物理并不奇怪，尽管这种理解是我们拥有完整的物质理论的基本要求。 因此，拟议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，并在此过程中了解基本粒子物理学。 为了实现这一目标，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.