Strange quark stars may be found in the universe. While astrophysicists debate quark stars' existence, a team of physicists has found that the remnant of a neutron star merger has the right mass to be a quark star.
When stars die, their cores become completely different kinds of objects. The sun will leave behind a white dwarf, a ball of highly compressed carbon and oxygen atoms. When a star explodes in a supernova, it leaves behind other stars. The objects are only a few miles across but can weigh a lot more than the sun. They are basically kilometers-wide atomic nuclei because they are almost entirely of pure neutrons.
Physicists don't yet fully understand nova stars, which are so exotic. We can observe how neutron stars interact with their surroundings and make some good guesses as to what's happening to all that neutron matter near the surface, but the makeup of their core remains elusive.
In the new tab, there's a question about quark stars.
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The problem is that the particles are not completely fundamental. Nuclear particles are made of smaller particles called quarks.
There are six different kinds of quarks. Two down quarks and one up quark make up the nucleus. If you put too many atoms together, they will turn into a ball of particles. If you combine too many neutrons, do they go to a ball of quarks?
"Maybe" is the answer, "it's complicated" is not. quarks don't like being alone The strong nuclear force is able to grow with distance. The force that pulls the quarks back increases if you pull them together. New quarks that are happy to bind with the separated ones appear in the vacuum when the attractive energy between them becomes so large.
An object made out of up or down quarks would explode very quickly and violently.
There could be a path using weird quarks. When strange quarks are left alone, they decay into lighter up and down quarks in a matter of minutes. The physics may change when a lot of quarks are in a group. Physicists have discovered that strange quarks can bind with up and down quarks to form triplets, but only under extreme pressures. One step above a star.
A black hole can be created if a star is compressed too much. The pressures are high enough to form a strange quark star but not strong enough for gravity to take complete control.
Astronomers don't expect to find a lot of weird stars in the universe, they have to be heavier than black holes, and there isn't much wiggle room. Because we don't fully understand the physics of strangelets, we don't know where strange stars can be found.
A team of astronomer looked at a merger of two stars that happened in the year 2000. A kilo nova is an explosion that is more powerful than a nova but less powerful than a supernova. Astronomers saw a similar event that produced both waves and radiation in the same year.
There are a number of options available when two stars collide. The theoretical calculations show that the stars could form a black hole, or even make a bigger star.
According to the new research, which was recently posted to the preprint database arXiv, the universe may have a strange quark star.
The mass of the object left behind by the merger was calculated by the team. It should have collapsed into a black hole because it was too heavy. The models of the strange stars' structures allow it to fall within the mass range.
It's too early to say if we've seen a rare strange quark star, but future observations may help us figure it out.
It was originally published on Space.com
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