Kazım Yavuz Ekşi

A spinning top whirls slower and slower until it stops. Neutron stars, the ultra-dense remnants of exploded stars, have their own 'stalling period.' In a new study, astronomers noticed that the rotation periods of two types of such stars, magnetars (with very strong magnetic fields) and dim X-ray neutron stars, cluster…

At the center of many galaxies lurks an invisible cloud — a halo of dark matter. If this matter is cold and light enough, it behaves like a superfluid: it flows without friction, and any rotation in it twists into tiny quantum vortices — threads the size of an atomic nucleus.