On Friday, November 8, 2019 at 9:24:00 AM UTC-6, John Clark wrote: > > On Thu, Nov 7, 2019 at 8:25 PM Lawrence Crowell <[email protected] > <javascript:>> wrote: > > On Thursday, November 7, 2019 at 6:34:24 PM UTC-6, Brent wrote: >> >> * >> Wouldn't a small piece of a neutron star quickly explode via beta >>> decay?* >>> >> >> >I worked this out using the old liquid drop model. A baseball sized >> neutron sphere would have a surface gravity of around 10^{14}m/s^2, as I >> recall, which is enough to drag weak decay positron products back. >> > > If its made of neutronium, Neutron Star stuff, it would have to be bigger > than a baseball. We're looking for something about 10 times the mass of the > Earth or about 6 *10^25 kg, neutronium has a density of about 4*10^17 kg > per cubic meter, so you'd need 150,000,000 cubic meters of neutronium, that > would be a sphere with a radius of 350 meters, nearly half a mile across. > That's much bigger than a baseball but not large enough to keep it stable, > the gravity would be too weak to provide enough pressure to keep it stable. > > However planet 9 could be a "Stranglet", that is a body made of "Strange > Matter", a theorized form of matter made up of equal parts up, down and > strange quarks. If such a thing exists this hypothetical form of matter > would be even denser than neutronium and be stable even at zero pressure. > In fact it would be the most stable form of matter that there is, and that > means it would be just about the most dangerous thing there is. Strange > Matter, if it exists, would act as a catalyst and turn any ordinary matter > that comes into contact with it into more strange matter. > > John K Clark >
I did some calculations on this a while back using the liquid drop model of the nucleus. This is a semi-empirical model of a nucleus as a liquid with various properties. I then included gravity into the model, where for a certain threshold of mass it is possible to have a chunk of neutron star about the size of a baseball (a few inches or 5 cm in radius) and the mass of the moon. The strangelet in QCD phenomenology has an (uds) quark configuration similar to the Lambda hyperon. A strangelet may then be a nucleus of sorts made with hyperons in place of neutrons. A heavy neutron star may have a hyperon core, and such a neutron star in a collision could splash out strangelet material. These might have some pathological properties, such as catalyzing other nuclei to become "strange." LC -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/e05f8ba2-1d82-4300-980c-680047364ca3%40googlegroups.com.
