The MOST Terrifying Substance In the Universe | Strange Matter

 

on this channel many times we have pondered over the question of what exactly is a black hole beyond the event horizon what would we find in a black hole's core that makes it powerful enough to break time reality and laws of physics all at once but have you ever wondered there could be something lurking in the core of a neutron star that is more dangerous and mysterious welcome the fact nominal and today let's find out perhaps the biggest mystery of the universe what is strange matter neutron stars are the most dangerous and densest cosmic objects in the universe that are in black holes at the end of the life of a supermassive star gravity suddenly and catastrophically gets the upper hand in the war it has been waging with the star's internal pressure for billions of years

 with its nuclear fuel exhausted and the outward pressure removed gravity suddenly compresses the star inward a shock wave travels to the core and rebounds blowing the star apart this whole process takes perhaps a couple of seconds and is what we call a supernova explosion

 with most of the star blown into space the core remains but gravity isn't done yet it will keep on raging against the core to have it collapse on itself and turn it into a black hole

 however neutron stars are the star cores that manage to survive this bout with gravity if the core of the former star is strong enough it will put up a fight against gravity but it will pay the price for such resistance the gravity will compress the core to the point that atoms inside the core will push against each other and the cramming will cause the electrons to thrust violently into their parent nuclei

 this will force them to combine with protons and form neutrons and that's how the neutron star gets its name so obviously the fact alone that neutron stars are the ultimate survivors should make you wonder what exactly is fueling these star's resilience well the answer may be the doom of the entire universe a thing we call for the lack of a better term strange matter strange matter could be the most dangerous substance in the entire universe

 just like the singularity of a black hole strange matter has no care for the laws of physics and the universe itself if strange matter is unleashed on the universe it could possibly become the contagion that would wipe out the entire universe

 no we're not kidding but if the strange matter doesn't turn out to be the epitome of what's the worst that could happen

 then studying it may unlock the secrets of the question we have been asking for quite a few centuries now how did the universe begin and what caused the big bang to understand strange matter we need to have basic knowledge of how neutron stars are made but that is a very large subject to dabble into one single article so let's just give you all a little bit more details while keeping it conveniently simple

 we already explained that neutron stars are made of the surviving core of a supermassive star exploding into a supernova

 as the arm-wrestling match between gravity and the core commences the inward force of gravity squeezes nuclei and particles together violently forcing electrons and protons to merge and form neutrons

 here's where things get weird atoms usually have a lot of empty space to let everything inside breathe but in the case of a neutron star all the space inside of its atoms are filled with all these particles the force between these particles causes them to repel from each other but frankly there is nowhere to go atoms at this moment are as congested as a local train in mumbai so the particles have no choice but to stick together therefore with all this energy building inside atoms of the former supermassive star's core they push outwards if they manage to match the inward force of gravity the core becomes a neutron star as its density flies through the roof

 this is why neutron stars are very small but also they are extremely dense a teaspoon of neutron star material would weigh more than a billion us tons that's more than the mass of mount everest

 one teaspoon of neutron star material would weigh as much as 700 great pyramids of giza a neutron is only about 10 to 15 miles in circumference hardly as big as an american city but would be heavier than a sun-sized star this density exerts so much pressure inside the environment of the neutron star's core that the rules of nuclear physics begin to jumble up inside and the chorus composition turns almost entirely into the strange matter but how does that happen well because of quarks an atom's nucleus is made up of protons and neutrons and these two are made up of the same smaller particles called quarks

 quarks are extremely monophobic they do not like to be isolated and that is why they are called confine if we were to try to break them apart they would try even harder to stay together but if you did manage to use enough energy to split them they will use that very energy to create more quarks to keep them company quarks come in many types but only two of them appear to make stable matter the up and the down quarks two up quarks and one down quark make a proton and two down quarks and one up quark make a neutron the other types of quarks decay quickly but in a neutron star things could be very different

 the forces operating inside neutron stars could be infinitesimally extreme and similar to how things were immediately after the big bang so if we managed to get a peek inside the core of a neutron star it would be like looking at a perfect copy of a fossil of the very first dinosaur only in this case we would be looking at the replica of a small sample of the primordial universe this is why scientists are so eager to learn how quarks behave inside a neutron star to be able to discern the very nature of the universe itself some theoretical physicists believe that inside a neutron star core protons and neutrons may deconfine as the particles are crammed next to each other with no space to repel this extreme congestion may cause the particles to dissolve into a pool of quarks

 these particles or quarks may reassemble into one giant substance made purely of quarks instead of atoms this quark matter may turn some neutron stars into quark stars and this is where things become dangerous when pressure builds up inside a quark star like a boiler it may force quarks to act differently some quarks may alter their nature and become stronger quarks these stranger things have bizarre nuclear properties and are stronger and heavier than your regular quark strange quarks then may create strange matter

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 strange matter would be the most desirable form of matter that every matter ever wanted to be perfectly dense indestructible and more stable than any other matter that exists in our universe such stability would allow this matter to exist with or without the neutron stars

 so if the strange matter does exist outside neutron stars this could be the doomsday device for the entire universe its stability could be infectious and every matter that strange matter would come in contact with would have its protons and neutrons dissolved and join the quark bath turning that substance into strange matter as well like a pandemic the infection of strange matter will spread across the universe but do we need to worry if such strange matter is locked inside neutron stars well no but yes because often neutron stars collide with others of their own kind or with black holes such a collision causes a massive spill of substances and energy from within these highly volatile cosmic objects and droplets of strange matter strangelets if you will could then escape

 these strangelets would be no less dense than the core of a neutron star but they would be tiny even subatomic carried by the sheer energy released by the neutron star collision they would travel great lengths to ultimately make contact with a star like our sun or a planet like our earth even a subatomic strange lit would be enough to begin converting our energy into strange matter along with everything and every living being on it

 the more it converts the more it would grow until the whole earth becomes a strange planet

 but as strange matter is extraordinarily dense the earth would begin to shrink reducing it to a hot clump the size of an asteroid all because of a subatomic drop of strange matter that nobody could ever see coming

 before you begin to have an existential crisis about a strangelet with the earth's name written on it that could strike us at any given moment you may want to hear another theory contrary to the one we just mentioned many scientists believe that strangelets are more common than we could assume their number could be enough to outnumber all the stars in the galaxy the advocates of these theories suggest that these free-roaming strangelets must be primordial forming when the universe was dense and hot like a neutron star's insides

 they could have been clumping around the gravity of galaxies and spreading everywhere as the universe expanded and evolved

 this theory proposes that these strangelets are the same thing that we call dark matter and possibly the bonding agent that holds galaxies together

 however all these theories are pretty much speculation the earth the sun and our galaxy have survived eons so the odds of a universal pandemic taking us out are next to nothing but what do you think are strange let's the universe-wide accidents waiting to happen or are they the shrouded protector of our galaxy also known as dark matter

 tell us in the comments and thanks for reading fact nominal