"Nuclear Pasta: Exotic Substance in Neutron Stars’...." Topic

… Crust May Be Universe's Strongest Material.

"An international team of researchers from McGill University, California Institute of Technology and Indiana University has calculated the strength of nuclear pasta — extremely dense material deep inside the crust of neutron stars. The results, published in the journal Physical Review Letters, show that nuclear pasta may be the strongest known material in the Universe, with a shear modulus of up to 1030 ergs/cm3 and breaking strain greater than 0.1….."
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Amicalement
Armand

Mining it might present some minor challenges.

Neutron stars pack their mass inside a 20-kilometer (12.4 miles) diameter. They are so dense that a single teaspoon would weigh a billion tons — assuming you somehow managed to snag a sample without being captured by the body's strong gravitational pull.

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Yep, miners better ask for double time.

Use child labour, they weigh less so will be easier for them to resist the gravity.

Gunfreak: LOL! Wrong on more levels than I can count right now! :)

Actually, one question I've long had about stuff like neutronium and this nuclear pasta stuff is what happens if you were, somehow, able to remove some of it from the intense gravity field which formed it? Is it stable? Will it retain its properties? Or freed from its gravitational prison will it attempt to expand back into some sort of normal matter?

Scott, might as well ask that about a black hole.

If a teaspoon weighs a billion tons, how can you remove anything from a 20 kilometer diameter neutron star?

Plus, our Sun's surface temperature is about just under 6,000 K. The temperature of a typical neutron star is about 600,000 K. That's toasty.

Haensel, Paweł; et al (2007). Neutron Stars. Springer.

Plus it could be hard to actually see what you are doing:

"The gravitational field at a neutron star's surface is about 2×10^11 times stronger than on Earth, at around 2.0×10^12 m/s2. Such a strong gravitational field acts as a gravitational lens and bends the radiation emitted by the neutron star such that parts of the normally invisible rear surface become visible. If the radius of the neutron star is 3GM/c2 or less, then the photons may be trapped in an orbit, thus making the whole surface of that neutron star visible from a single vantage point, along with destabilizing photon orbits at or below the 1 radius distance of the star."

Green, Simon F.; Jones, Mark H.; Burnell, S. Jocelyn (2004). An Introduction to the Sun and Stars (illustrated ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 322

Or freed from its gravitational prison will it attempt to expand back into some sort of normal matter?

Ya, so if you had a bit of neutron star or black hole in your hands, it would revert back to the normal matter and behave as it normally would without the great gravitational pressure. So you wouldn't end up with "mini suns" in your hand. You simply have normal sun matter in your hand….which is 70% hydrogen and 29% helium. Since the gravitation forces are gone, you would just have a lot of gas! (Physics humour)

Gunfreak: LOL! Wrong on more levels than I can count right now! :)

I've talked to Stephen Hawking's brother's nephew's cousin's former roommate" and he says my logic is perfect.

Bowman, I'm assuming some sort of amazingly advanced technology which would allow the sample to be taken. But once you had it, I don't think it would be hydrogen and helium anymore. With all the atomic nuclei crushed together, I don't think the normal elements would apply anymore. Would the sample be one single 'atom' with a ridiculously high atomic number? Would it start to spontaneously fission into smaller 'atoms'. If so, how much energy would be released? I have no idea about any of this, but I can't say I've ever seen it being discussed anywhere.

Good points, Scott.

I'm just guessing but I think the pressures of neutron stars and black holes are quite a bit different.

Your typical neutron star is really only 1 – 2 solar masses. Therefore, the prime constituents would still probably be the same as within our own sun: 70% hydrogen, 29% helium and 1% everything else.

Plus I don't think there are any "atomic nuclei crushed together". They are actually obliterated. The electrons crash out of their shells and smash into the nucleus. The electrons hit the protons and turn into more neutrons. Eventually you have a dense neutron soup which aligns into the "pasta"

The "pasta" is at the core. Just to complicate things even more, the transitional steps (between the compressed gases at the surface and the "pasta" core) would be liquid metallic hydrogen. That's when the individual atoms separate their protons and electrons and the former gas now acts like a liquid metal. I believe helium does something similar.

By removing them from the neutron star, I suspect the electrons and protons find each other and revert to the normal gases. What does the "pasta" at the core turn into, if one was trying to extract it? Maybe the pasta reverts to metallic liquid hydrogen or helium? Maybe the neutron pasta stays stable. The neutrons have no charge so there shouldn't be any electrical repulsion. Maybe they'd just dissipate in the electromagnetic and gravitational fields of the neutron star. Neutrons on Earth are simply captured in our gravity as well.

nature.com/articles/415297a