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In this 5 Live Science podcast, Northern Ireland native Jocelyn Bell Burnell talks with Dr Chris Smith about radio astronomy and her discovery of pulsars. These are rotating neutron stars that emit beams of electromagnetic radiation from their magnetic poles, the radiation sweeping the Universe like a lighthouse beam. Neutron stars are extremely dense. Atoms are mostly empty space, a simplistic model resembling our Solar System with electrons existing in outer orbitals and a nucleus at the centre. However just like the Solar System, there is lots of space between the electrons and nucleus. In a neutron star, gravity squeezes everything together so tightly that nuclei in adjacent atoms pack up against each other. The result is super-extreme density and according to Scientific American, a ping-pong ball sized piece of a neutron star would weigh over a billion tonnes.