Neutron stars in fiction

Neutron star mergers, and their potential to cause extinction events at interstellar distances due to the enormous amounts of radiation released, also feature on occasion.

Neutronium, the degenerate matter that makes up neutron stars, often turns up as a material existing outside of them in science fiction; in reality, it would likely not be stable.

When a star runs out of fuel available for nuclear fusion in its core, it undergoes gravitational collapse as there is no longer sufficient outward pressure to counteract the inward force of gravity.

[3] In Greg Egan's 1997 novel Diaspora, where most of far-future humanity has embraced posthumanism and had their minds uploaded to computers, the remainder is wiped out when the radiation from such an event strikes the Earth.

Space: Manifold 2) depicts the construction of immense radiation shields to serve as protection, and the 2005–2006 television series Threshold portrays the lead-up to the anticipated destruction of the Earth by the shockwave from a neutron star merger.

In the story, observers worry that the mass loss could result in the neutron-forming process happening in reverse, rapidly releasing potentially calamitous amounts of energy.

[7] It frequently makes appearances in science fiction as a material existing outside of neutron stars, though astrophysicist Elizabeth Stanway [Wikidata] writes that it would most likely not be stable outside of those extreme gravitational conditions.

[1][7] In Niven's 1968 short story "There Is a Tide", a ten-foot piece of neutronium destroys the spaceship of scavengers who mistake it for a valuable artefact through its gravitational effects.