In sci.astro message , Fri, 3 Jun 2011
19:49:57, Steve Willner posted:

I don't know much about neutron stars, but gravity or bouyancy as a
restoring force is probably most familiar on earth in water waves.
Consider a small parcel of water that's perturbed upwards. Gravity
pulls it back down but generally "overshoots," and a wave propagates
outwards. The same happens in a variety of other contexts,
includings earth's atmosphere. (Thus "gravity waves" are not the
same as "gravitational waves.")

Alternative restoring forces can be pressure (e.g., sound waves) and
elastic body shear. This is important in seismic studies. I see
Wikipedia has some information on s-waves and p-waves as well as
gravity waves.

Presumably the gravity waves on a neutron star surface aren't very
high, but they could still contain a lot of energy.

Robert L Forward (Dragon's Egg; Starquake) seemed to think that a
neutron star would have a rigid crust. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ne
utron_star#Structure agrees.

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