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Simulations Indicate "Nuclear Pasta" Degenerate Matter is 10 Billion Times Stronger Than Steel

posted by martyb on Wednesday September 19 2018, @04:46AM   
from the sauce-or-gravy? dept.

takyon writes:

Weird 'Nuclear Pasta' Could Be The Strongest Material in The Universe

A really weird form of matter found in ultradense objects such as neutron stars is looking like a good candidate for the strongest material in the Universe. According to new calculations, it clocks in at a massive 10 billion times stronger than steel.

"This is a crazy-big figure," physicist Charles Horowitz of Indiana University Bloomington told Science News, "but the material is also very, very dense, so that helps make it stronger."

[...] This incredibly high density does something strange to the nuclei of the atoms in the star. As you move closer and closer in towards the centre, the density increases, squishing and squeezing together the nuclei until they deform and fuse together.

The resulting nuclear structures are thought to resemble pasta - hence the name - forming just inside the star's crust. Some structures are flattened into sheets like lasagna, some are bucatini tubes, some are spaghetti-like strands and others are gnocchi-esque clumps. Their density is immense, over 100 trillion times that of water.

Nuclear pasta:

In astrophysics and nuclear physics, nuclear pasta is a type of degenerate matter found within the crusts of neutron stars. Between the surface of a neutron star and the quark–gluon plasma at the core, at matter densities of 10¹⁴ g/cm³, nuclear attraction and Coulomb repulsion forces are of similar magnitude. The competition between the forces allows for the formation of a variety of complex structures assembled from neutrons and protons. Astrophysicists call these types of structures nuclear pasta because the geometry of the structures resembles various types of pasta.

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Original Submission

• Soylentnews from the future Soylentnews from the future (Score: 3, Funny) by Bot on Wednesday September 19 2018, @06:19AM (1 child)

  by Bot (3902) on Wednesday September 19 2018, @06:19AM (#736930) Journal

  After 400 year research and countless billions of credits invested, the first stable nukepasta is delivered. The scientist AI gets linked to the propaganda AI for the press conference.
  - this nukepasta is 10 billion times stronger than steel
  - it will be good for weapons then?
  - not really, it is 10 billion times heavier than steel so it is a chore to move around
  - it will be good for defense and construction then?
  - not really, a guy with a slingshot hitting it would start a chain reaction and blow the solar system up
  - well guys are long extinct but I get the idea, so what it is good for?
  - dunno, that question was not in the research spec
  - ok thank you then

  --
  Account abandoned.

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• Re:Soylentnews from the future (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 20 2018, @01:24AM

  by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 20 2018, @01:24AM (#737325)

  It might be good for weapons though. Dropping a single cubic centimetre of degenerate neutron star matter onto the surface of a planet would be quite devastating. The decompression energy released is of the order of 10²⁶ joules, quite sufficient to boil all the oceans on Earth. Moving the 100 billion kilograms of its mass might not be so practical though.

  Parent