Can anyone give me the straight dope on condensed matter, or neutronium? Is there any available on earth? Can I buy some? Make an earring out of some? I’ve tried a few search engines and various combinations, but all I get are heavy metal band listings, SF reviews, and gamer theory. Anybody got a good website on the nature and use of neutronium?
Is this the guy who has been bugging me for time machine designs? I told you that you can’t possibly get enough to build the device before proton decay gets you.
No, there is none availible. As far as I know, neutronium and degenerate matter have never been produced on Earth. And even if you did manage to find a source, jewelry is right out, considering the mass. According to Penn State site containing astronomy lecture notes, neutronium is approximately 10[sup]15[/sup] times as dense as water. One cubic centimeter of water weighs one gram. Once cubic centimeter of neutronium would weigh 10[sup]15[/sup] grams, or about 165 tons. You best do those earlobe exercises.
I’d advise against having neutronium around you. It takes enormous pressure to keep it stable. In fact, nothing short of the intense graviational force of a neutron star can keep it stable. If you somehow produced one cubic centimeter of neutronium, not only would it weigh 165 tons, it would quickly turn into 165 tons of rapidly expanding gas and plasma.
jeez, I thought it’d be stable after it was formed. What does it turn into when expanding? Do we get particle decay of the neutrons? what does it turn into? I guess building my car’s bumper out of it is a bad idea.
If you managed to get some neutronium away from a neutron star, it would most likely turn into either hydrogen (if the neutrons fly apart fast enough to be completely separated), or iron (low point of the potential energy per nucleon curve), completely ionized in either case. Personally, my money’s on the iron, but I’m not quite sure how to calculate it.
BTW, condensed matter can refer to anything other than a gas or plasma, depending on the context. The term you’re looking for is “neutron-degenerate matter”.
Having read the threads here for over a year, I beg to differ about the degenerate matter not having been produced on earth. I meet them every day.
I just realized that 10[sup]15[/sup] grams = 165 tons is completely wrong. It’s actually a billion tons. That’s the weight of a mountain a couple of thousand feet tall.
I appear to have dropped out a few zeros there.
sfm.
"I just realized that 1015 grams = 165 tons is completely wrong. It’s actually a billion tons. That’s the weight of a mountain a couple of thousand feet tall."
So even if it were stable, it’d fall right through the Earth to the centre and stay there?
Well, probably not right through, but it would attempt to approach the center of the Earth. The pressure of mountain ranges on the Earth’s crust contributes to the formation of all kinds of interesting features, including volcanoes and hot springs. Over time, your neutronium sample would pierce the crust and give the magma from the mantle a path to the surface. Such a situation would be [Spock]fascinating[/Spock].
Man, I am depressed! First, we can’t have pet black holes to use as disposal units, now I can’t keep “neutron-degenerate matter” (thanks Chronos) as a coffee-table item either! What is the most exotic element I could keep at home as a conversation piece?
Neutronium aside, particle physics hypothesizes other forms of extremely dense matter, some of which might be stable under terrestrial conditions.
One is strange matter. Ordinary atomic matter consists of electrons orbiting nuclei made of protons and neutrons, which in turn are made of quarks of two different types, labled up and down. There are other kinds of quarks however, including a kind labled strange. All the currently known particles incorporating strange quarks are unstable, but it’s theorized that a sufficiently large conglomeration of up, down, and strange quarks might be stable. If this ball of quarks had an integer positive charge, electrons could orbit it like an ordinary nucleus. The only difference would be that for a given positive charge, this strange nucleus would be more massive than an ordinary nucleus. (I don’t have any figures on just how much more massive; anyone?)
Strange matter is considered the most likely of several possible scenerios. There are others that are increasingly speculative, such as magnetic monopoles, or charged micro-black holes. It should be noted however that searches for anomalously heavy atoms have turned up empty, meaning that they are either vanishingly rare or don’t occur naturally at all.
Maybe you can have your black hole afterall. According to this article (which I provided a link for a long time ago, in a thread far, far away), some physicists are speculating that black holes of a Planck mass (about 0.00001 grams) are stable. Throw in some charge, and maybe you could keep it from falling through your coffee-table. With the right rate of in-falling matter, maybe you could keep it in a continuous state of evaporation.
Spam, C&P reported. (magizian)