A recent issue of Nautilus has an interesting story about "Nuclear Pasta": What Neutron Stars, Lasagna, and Waffles Have in Common
Hot fluids of neutrons that flow without friction, superconductors made of protons, and a solid crust built of exotic atoms—features like these make neutron stars some of the strangest objects we've found in the cosmos so far. They pack all the mass of a star into a sphere the size of a city, resulting in states of matter we just don't have on Earth.
And yet, despite their extreme weirdness, neutron stars contain a mishmash of vaguely familiar features, as if seen darkly through a funhouse mirror. One of the weirdest is the fact that deep inside a neutron star you can find a whole menu full of (nuclear) pasta.
The pasta is made of protons and neutrons, held together by the extreme pressures. These oddball nuclei arrange themselves into weird configurations that Matt Caplan of Indiana University and his colleagues call "nuclear pasta."[1] The pasta layer lies in the inner crust, a transitional zone between a neutron star's outer crust and core. In the top of this layer, the nuclei form blobs called "gnocchi." Deeper down, they join together into cylindrical shapes called "spaghetti." More pressure, and the spaghetti compresses into "lasagna": flattish sheets of nuclear matter. Then the pasta transitions into "anti-pasta": The sheets of lasagna form cylindrical hollows where neutrons begin leaking out, which Caplan calls "anti-spaghetti." And finally, when the pressure is high enough, those hollows break into small bubbles, the "anti-gnocchi" phase.
The Nautilus goes on to explain how the researchers came to these conclusions based on the observation of a variety of neutron stars known as magnetars which, when undergoing a "star quake", cast off vast amounts of gamma rays. I found the article to be very readable and understandable by a lay person.
And now for the age old question: What do you put on your pasta — "sauce" or "gravy"?
References:
[1] Article: Pasta nucleosynthesis: Molecular dynamics simulations of nuclear statistical equilibrium. (pdf)
[2] Abstract: Nuclear Waffles (http://arxiv.org/abs/1409.2551) and full article (pdf)
[3] Abstract: Magnetically driven crustquakes in neutron stars.
(Score: 2) by davester666 on Wednesday December 30 2015, @05:12AM
What are things you shouldn't eat too much of in one sitting?
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday December 30 2015, @06:23AM
Umm.... baked beans with a side of Brussels sprouts, and a banana as dessert?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 3, Funny) by takyon on Wednesday December 30 2015, @06:23AM
All three could cause gravitational lensing.
1 waffle, round (7" dia) (75.0 g) [calorielab.com]
At one meter away:
angle = (4 * 6.673e-11 * .075) / (1 * 2.99e8) = 6.695e-20 degrees = 2.41×10e-16 arcseconds
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Informative) by c0lo on Wednesday December 30 2015, @06:30AM
Just one of the many manifestation forms of FSM, blessed be His Noodly Appendages.
(colander tip and a mock sheepish grin)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 30 2015, @12:06PM
Is it *disprovable*? What test could he perform, what measurements could he take, that would be capable of contradicting his model? If nothing/none, it's not science.
What has changed in our knowledge of gravity, electromagnetism, or the weak nuclear force in recent years that have made this model only apparent now? Is this an amazing breakthrough that nobody else over the period of many decades has been able to come up with. Or is this just come guy who needs to publish lest he perish?
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday December 30 2015, @04:19PM
They can model a wide variety of stars, and simulate the result we can measure here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutron-star_oscillation [wikipedia.org]
I skimmed the paper on arvix and it boils down to they can pretty much build a model to fit observations if they want although oddly enough they haven't. Or they haven't published that yet, or more likely in a "publish or perish" would why release one huge paper when you'll get twice the meaningless number of points if you release two smaller papers? Or maybe there's a problem with the application paper. Or the team working on application is totally different than the team working the theory/sim side. At any rate its a narrow focused paper by design not mistake.
Whats changed is it smells close to fusion research which gets the DOE and .mil all wound up about fusion bombs and classification, and the simulation required resolution such that it keeps a medium sized supercomputer busy for awhile... you could run it at home using MPI and a nice gaming machine, but it would run about 1000 times slower, unless you bought 1000 beefy gamer machines and quite a network (probably infiniband?)
From looking at the paper I think they did a zillion simulations rather than like one simulation that took a zillion FLOPs. Therefore you could probably expect some kind of trippy screen saver based on the results to run, slowly, on your desktop turning it into a space heater while it "saves" your CRT. Or lets face it, it would be a cool looking trip toy.
(Score: 3, Funny) by VLM on Wednesday December 30 2015, @04:01PM
What Neutron Stars, Lasagna, and Waffles Have in Common
Hot fluids of neutrons that flow without friction, superconductors made of protons, and a solid crust built of exotic atoms—features like these make neutron stars some of the strangest objects we've found in the cosmos so far.
Umm, starts off sounding like a pickup line from bad pr0n, but by the end you're gonna be sleeping alone?
Reads kinda like the old IRC "I put on my wizard hat" story (oh sorry we call those sexting greentexts now)
I thought I'd get lucky with my line about her coming over so I could frictionlessly flow my hot fluids past her exotic event horizon just the way she likes it as per the article, but I ended up alone on the couch watching reruns of full metal alchemist on the TV. Oh well. That's how us alpha (particles) roll, yo.