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Judi Lynn

(160,219 posts)
Fri May 8, 2020, 11:00 AM May 2020

The Surprising Reason Why Neutron Stars Don't All Collapse To Form Black Holes



In the aftermath of the creation of a neutron star, it can have a variety of masses, many of which are far in excess of the most massive white dwarf. But there is a limit to how massive they can get before becoming a black hole, and a simple nuclear physics experiment on a single proton may have just discovered why. (NASA)


There’s something very special inside a proton and neutron that holds the key.

Ethan Siegel

Jun 20, 2018 · 6 min read

There are few things in the Universe that are as easy to form, in theory, as black holes are. Bring enough mass into a compact volume and it gets more and more difficult to gravitationally escape from it. If you were to gather enough matter in a single spot and let gravitation do its thing, you’d eventually pass a critical threshold, where the speed you’d need to gravitationally escape would exceed the speed of light. Reach that point, and you’ll create a black hole.

But real, normal matter will very much resist getting there. Hydrogen, the most common element in the Universe, will fuse in a chain reaction at high temperatures and densities to create a star, rather than a black hole. Burned out stellar cores, like white dwarfs and neutron stars, can also resist gravitational collapse and stave off becoming a black hole. But while white dwarfs can reach only 1.4 times the mass of the Sun, neutron stars can get twice as massive. At long last, we finally understand why.



Sirius A and B, a normal (Sun-like) star and a white dwarf star. Even though the white dwarf is much lower in mass, its tiny, Earth-like size ensures its escape velocity is many times larger. For a neutron stars, masses can be even larger, with physical sizes in the tens of kilometers. (NASA, ESA and G. Bacon (STScI))

In our Universe, the matter-based objects we know of are all made of just a few simple ingredients: protons, neutrons, and electrons. Each proton and neutron is made up of three quarks, with a proton containing two up and one down quark, and a neutron containing one up and two downs. On the other hand, electrons themselves are fundamental particles. Although particles come in two classes — fermions and bosons — both quarks and electrons are fermions.

More:
https://medium.com/starts-with-a-bang/the-surprising-reason-why-neutron-stars-dont-all-collapse-to-form-black-holes-49808cb3817f





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The Surprising Reason Why Neutron Stars Don't All Collapse To Form Black Holes (Original Post) Judi Lynn May 2020 OP
First let me dust off my "Astrophysics for Dummies", my "Children's Garden of Quantom Physics" ... marble falls May 2020 #1
ya know. this old brain of mine has been workin overtime lately, and mopinko May 2020 #2
That's pretty good science journalism ! I was immediately struck by a concept that ... eppur_se_muova May 2020 #3

marble falls

(56,359 posts)
1. First let me dust off my "Astrophysics for Dummies", my "Children's Garden of Quantom Physics" ...
Fri May 8, 2020, 11:22 AM
May 2020

and my "Mr Einstein's Theory of Relativity in 1,000 Words", oh yeah - and my Stephen Hawking Flash Cards.

mopinko

(69,806 posts)
2. ya know. this old brain of mine has been workin overtime lately, and
Fri May 8, 2020, 01:16 PM
May 2020

i spent decades trying to nail down one little point, and connect them to the next little point, hoping at some point this line reached an answer. like all good answers, it set off a cascade of questions.
the one i am asking the most it- is every damn thing a fractal?
i mean, i kinda knew that, but the little buggers are jumpin up and tweaking my nose on the regular.

eppur_se_muova

(36,227 posts)
3. That's pretty good science journalism ! I was immediately struck by a concept that ...
Fri May 8, 2020, 01:43 PM
May 2020

was explicitly spelled out by the author a little further down in the article:

The Pauli exclusion principle responsible for atomic structure is responsible for keeping the densest physical objects of all from becoming black holes.


If it weren't for the Pauli exclusion principle, all the electrons in an atom could collapse down into the lowest orbital, and the Periodic Table wouldn't exist (or it would, but it would be only one row deep, and not periodic ... ). I suppose, then, that all atoms would be capable of forming covalent bonds with any other atom, so chemistry would reduce to every atom being stuck together in one big molecule.

The information about the internal structure of the proton is very interesting, and should lead to better modeling of intranuclear interactions. Then Kris Heyde can come out with a new textbook!
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