Equation 19 · Part 1 · A Neutron Star Is a Redshift Standard
Symbol z
What this part means
z is part of the quantity the equation computes from the expression on the right.
Its job in the formula
z is part of the quantity the equation computes from the expression on the right.
Full expression→Symbol z→Article meaning
The passage around this formula
The closest anyone came to this measurement, decades before NICER existed, was Jean Cottam, Frits Paerels, and Mariano Mendez’s 2002 analysis of the bursting neutron star EXO 0748-676. Stacking twenty-eight thermonuclear X-ray bursts observed with the Chandra grating spectrometer, they reported narrow absorption features matching iron and oxygen transitions, all consistent with a single redshift of z=0.35 — a clean, quantitative result, and for several years the field’s best evidence that a neutron-star surface line could actually be resolved [ 5 ] . The claim implied a star built from ordinary nuclear matter, in a mass range of roughly 1.3 to 2.0 solar masses, and it was treated for most of…
Learn the underlying idea
A variable is a named place for a value. Its letter is a local label: x can mean position in one formula and a data point in another.
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Sources cited in the surrounding passage
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