Astrophysics 101: The Crab Pulsar Traditional Geocache
Astrophysics 101: The Crab Pulsar
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Difficulty:
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Size: 
(micro)
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This is the first in a series of caches intended to display the relative sizes of the stellar (i.e., star like) objects that exist in the Universe. The intended scale is 1 kilometer = 1 inch. This cache shows the relative size of a neutron star and will serve as the center reference point for future caches in the series.
The Crab Pulsar is a relatively young neutron star located in the Crab Nebula (M1). The Crab Nebula itself was formed during a supernova observed on Earth by Chinese and Arab astronomers in 1054 AD. This catastrophic event was bright enough to be seen in daylight for 23 days and was visible in the night sky for 653 days even though the nebula is over 6300 Light Years from Earth.
The Crab Pulsar was formed from the collapsed remnant of this supernova and consists entirely of neutrons (hence the name 'neutron star'). Although nearly the same mass as the sun, this star is only 25 kilometers in diameter (Approximately the size of Dover, NH). The star is thermally 'cold' and is supported against gravitational collapse by the repulsion between neutrons resulting from the Pauli Exclusion Principle (You have to love Fermi-Dirac statistics!). A neutron star is one of the few possible end states of stellar evolution. Stars with a smaller initial mass become Brown/White Dwarfs. For more massive stars, the gravitational force overcomes the repulsion between neutrons and the star collapses to a Black Hole (essentially a point).
On the scale of this series (1 inch = 1 kilometer), any of the large red spheres in front of the store adjacent to the cache would be approximately the same size as the neutron star.
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
Yhzvabhf Chyfne Pnpur (YCP)