When a high-mass star dies, it violently blows apart in a titanic explosion (called a supernova) that can be seen from across the Universe. The remnant is either a tiny, extremely dense object called a neutron star, or a black hole. What if the Sun were to collapse in a supernova (it won’t, but let’s pretend)? Find the period of rotation of the remnant left behind if we model the Sun as a solid sphere, and it compresses from its current radius of approximately 7.0 × 105 km to a new radius of 10 km (a reasonable estimate for the size of a neutron star). The Sun’s current rotation period is 25 days. For simplicity, assume no mass loss.

When a high-mass star dies, it violently blows apart in a titanic explosion (called a supernova) that can be seen from across the Universe. The remnant is either a tiny, extremely dense object called a neutron star, or a black hole. What if the Sun were to collapse in a supernova (it won’t, but let’s pretend)? Find the period of rotation of the remnant left behind if we model the Sun as a solid sphere, and it compresses from its current radius of approximately 7.0 × 105 km to a new radius of 10 km (a reasonable estimate for the size of a neutron star). The Sun’s current rotation period is 25 days. For simplicity, assume no mass loss.