If the neutron star is behaving like a pulsar, it will also emit non-thermal radiation through synchrotron emission. The thermal emission peaks somewhere near the cutoff between ultraviolet and x-rays, meaning that a lot of this will be dangerous to humans. Assuming a radius of roughly 10 km, the Stefan-Boltzmann law predicts that a young neutron star should have a luminosity about 19% that of the Sun. Young neutron stars that have begun cooling (a couple of years old - younger than this one) have temperatures of $\sim10^6$ Kelvin. Thermal emission is just the light emitted by a black body. Neutron stars can produce high-energy radiation through two means: thermal and non-thermal emission. Let's start by figuring out what we're up against. I would also like for it to pass close by enough for the colonists to feel some of the tidal forces and gravitational waves but not enough to kill them. I would like for the neutron star to have an accretion disk (I would love for the colonists to witness it accrete away some of their main star's mass), but I can dispense with that if necessary. Is there anything else they could do to shield themselves from this catastrophe, short of leaving the planet?Įdit: It's an older, non-pulsar neutron star. What if they dig deeper into the planet's core? Could the layers of rock shield them from the worst of the radiation? (Assume they have tech to pull this off).Assume they don't have access to interstellar ships. I'm trying to figure out a way for the colonists to survive the impending cataclysm. It turns out this planet is part of a binary system and once every several hundred years it passes by a neutron star, which irradiates its surface. Situation: My colony is threatened by a passing neutron star.
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