In the extreme hearts of neutron stars, fundamental particles are twisted into strange 'pasta' shapes that could reveal untold secrets about how dead stars evolve.
Imagine cooking pasta at a temperature of over a trillion degrees. But this isn't just any ordinary Sunday-night dish; it's the"nuclear pasta" found inside neutron stars. Researchers have just revealed that these strange nuclear shapes penetrate far deeper into the cores of neutron stars than we ever thought possible, and that this can radically alter the properties of those dead stars.
Given these extreme conditions, astronomers still do not understand exactly how the matter of neutron stars composes itself. One possibility is that neutron stars are really hybrids. Their crust and outer layers consist almost entirely of neutrons, with some electrons and protons thrown into the mix. But their cores experience such extreme pressures and densities that even neutrons break down, leaving behind a dense semi-liquid of quarks — the most fundamental constituent of matter.
This is no ordinary macaroni. The nuclear"pasta" in this transition zone is made of compact clumps of neutrons immersed in a sea of quarks. Their appearance comes from the complex interplay of strong nuclear and electromagnetic forces, which cause the neutrons to bend and twist into a variety of odd shapes throughout the transition zone.
The researchers found that curvature tensions can favor some shapes, enabling the now-"cooked" pasta to reach deeper into the quark core, while other shapes are disfavored. Specifically, they found that tubes and bubbles can survive to far higher densities than previously thought, thanks to the contributions of the curvature tension, while drops and rods don't last for long.
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