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There's Now Strong Evidence That an Exotic Type of Matter Exists Inside Neutron Stars - ScienceAlert

There's Now Strong Evidence That an Exotic Type of Matter Exists Inside Neutron Stars - ScienceAlert

There's Now Strong Evidence That an Exotic Type of Matter Exists Inside Neutron Stars - ScienceAlert
Jun 03, 2020 1 min, 5 secs

Physicists have produced new calculations using data from gravitational waves first detected from a neutron star collision in August 2017, along with observations of surprisingly massive neutron stars.

Their conclusion hints at an exciting result - the cores of the most massive neutron stars are so dense, atomic nuclei cease to exist, condensing into quark matter.

"Confirming the existence of quark cores inside neutron stars has been one of the most important goals of neutron star physics ever since this possibility was first entertained roughly 40 years ago," said theoretical physicist Aleksi Vuorinen of the University of Helsinki and the Helsinki Institute of Physics.

They found that neutron stars towards the upper mass limit of such objects - at least 2 solar masses - show characteristics that indicate the presence of a huge quark matter core, more than half the neutron star's entire diameter.

The discovery of quark matter inside neutron stars wouldn't just be amazing for its own sake - it could help us learn more about the very earliest moments of our Universe.

These days, we can only find quark matter very briefly in particle collider experiments; but some massive neutron stars could be harbouring it, too.

If we can characterise the neutron star conditions under which quark matter forms, that could help us better understand the quark epoch.

Summarized by 365NEWSX ROBOTS

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