When a massive star undergoes supernova (explodes), gravity compresses the core into a neutron star. Neutron stars are small, about twenty kilometers in diameter, but have a mass greater than the Sun, which has a diameter of 1.4 million kilometers. If you could bring a teaspoon full of a neutron star to Earth, it would weigh a billion tons. Besides a black hole, neutron stars are the densest of the known stellar objects. In The Prophecy, book one of the Tuar Tums trilogy, Yendola’s evening star, Shinua, was a neutron star that broke apart and scattered across the galaxy. A piece struck Earth 65 million years ago, causing the dinosaurs’ extinction and tying Yendola’s future to Earth. It was this event that ultimately brought the Tuar Tums to Earth.
