Not only do neutron stars create gold when they smash into each other, they can be used to gain insights into many different kinds of physics.
When they are spinning rapidly, they become the pulsars discovered in 1967 by Jocelyn Bell Burnell. Their regular pulses of electromagnetic energy give a precise clock, and they can used to probe the nature of the interstellar medium, and of space-time itself.
You can find out more on the 3rd of February, when Victoria Kaspi of McGill University will give the Perimeter Institute Lecture on neutron stars. The lecture will be broadcast live, and will be viewable below. Shortly after the lecture, a recording will be posted in the same place. (NB the embed seems to fail on some platforms. If you can’t see it, follow this link.)
