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Inside this neutron star, the strongest stuff in the universe may be hiding.
Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech
How to cook "nuclear pasta" in three easy steps:
1. Boil a large dying star until it becomes supernova and explodes. (It could take a billion years, so be patient.)
2. Stir vigorously the remnants of protons and electrons inside the shriveled core of the star until they melt into a soup of ultradensive neutrons. Apply as much gravity as necessary.
3. Break the neutron stew into a sealed sphere the size of Toronto. Cover in a crystalline crust and serve at 1.08 million degrees Fahrenheit (600,000 degrees Celsius).
Here is! You just made one of the strangest preparations in the universe – nuclear pasta.
For several years, astrophysicists have imagined that such an entanglement of linguine-like matter could propagate inside neutron stars – the relatively small and incredibly dense stars that form after the massive collapse of the suns.
Just like your nonna's pasta, nuclear pasta makes excellent leftovers (it's perhaps the only material that can survive in a star after a supernova). Unlike noodles, nuclear pasta can be the most powerful substance in the universe.
In a new study that will soon be published in the journal Physical Review Letters (and previously published in the online journal arXiv.org), a team of researchers from the United States and Canada conducted a series of computer simulations to test the resistance of nuclear pulp. based on all that is known about the neutron star conditions under which it is formed. The team determined that to break a plate of nuclear pulps, it would take about 10 billion times the force needed to break the steel.
"[That] can make nuclear pulps the most powerful material in the known universe, "the researchers wrote in their new article.
Much of the strength of nuclear pulps is probably derived from its density. Nuclear pulps are thought to exist only in the interior of neutron stars, which form when massive stars (at least eight times the mass of the Earth's sun) are formed. collapse under their own gravity. As a result, neutron stars pack a total mass of sun (or more) into a compact core of about 20 kilometers in diameter. To visualize how incredibly dense it is, imagine that the mass of 1.3 million Earth turns into a single American city.
To exist in such extreme conditions, everything in a neutron star becomes much heavier than in any other part of the universe. According to a NASA article published in 2007, a cube of sugar weighed more than a billion tons in a neutron star, about the weight of Mount Everest.
According to new research, nuclear pulps could become so compact and compact that they could even form small "mountains" capable of lifting the crust of some neutron stars. As these stars spin (and neutron stars can spin extremely fast), these raised bumps could theoretically create ripples in the surrounding space-time, also known as gravitational waves.
Gravitational waves have been detected where two neutron stars have collided with each other – but the question of whether nuclear pulps have anything to do with this will require many more studies. If nothing else, hope that this new paper will make a lot of space enthusiasts for more answers.
Originally published on Live Science.
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