Nuclear pulp, the most well-known substance in the universe |

Postgraduate researcher Matthew Caplan at McGill University and his colleagues at Indiana University and the California Institute of Technology have successfully completed the largest computer simulations ever performed on neutron star crusts.

"The solidity of the neutron bark, especially the bottom of the crust, is relevant to a lot of astrophysics problems, but it is not well understood," says Caplan.

Neutron stars are born after supernovas, an implosion that squeezes an object about the size of the sun to about the size of Montreal, making them "one hundred trillion times denser than the earth." the earth-like ones with a thin crust enveloping a liquid core.

This high density has the effect that the material constituting the neutron star, known as nuclear pulps, has a unique structure. Below the crust, competing forces between protons and neutrons lead them to take forms such as long cylinders or flat planes, known in the literature as "lasagna" and "spaghetti". huge densities and strange shapes make nuclear pulps incredibly rigid.

Through their computer simulations, which required 2 million processor hours or the equivalent of 250 years on a laptop equipped with a single GPU, Caplan and his colleagues were able to stretch and distort the material in the crust of neutron stars.

"Our results are valuable to astronomers studying neutron stars. Their outer layer is the part we actually see. So we have to understand that to interpret the astronomical observations of these stars, "adds Caplan.

The results, accepted for publication in Letters of physical examination, could help astrophysicists better understand gravitational waves like those detected last year when two neutron stars collided. Their new findings even suggest that solitary neutron stars could generate small gravitational waves.

"There's a lot of interesting physics going on in extreme conditions, and understanding the physical properties of a neutron star allows scientists to test their theories and models," Caplan adds. With this result, many problems need to be reconsidered. What size of mountain can you build on a neutron star before the crust breaks and it crumbles? What will it look like? And above all, how can astronomers observe it?

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