8 ms·
What would a teaspoonful of neutron star do to you?
- ansy 15y agoSeems like a viable plot device for a campy space opera.
- arethuza 15y agoIndeed, "the energy put out by the sun in 2 or 3 seconds" - sounds like a Culture handgun ;-)
- saturn 15y ago> sounds like a Culture handgun Which springs from memory matter disguised as a false tooth!
- me_again 15y agoIn 'consider phlebas' it mentions the Culture use "CAM" or collapsed antimatter, as a weapon. It's a ship-to-ship rather than handgun-sized deal though- probably a good thing, since 200% of the mass gets converted to energy when it hits regular matter, not a measly 0.08%...
- ZoFreX 15y agoI love the analogies, but I got a little lost on the energy output. What kind of effect would "the energy put out by the sun in 2 or 3 seconds" have if released relatively slowly? (The half-life of neutrons is ~ 10 minutes according to the article.)
- niels_olson 15y agothe analogies break down at some point. Turns out we haven't tried this particular experiment. And probably won't. Divide a trillion megaton bombs by ((10 min * 60 s/min)/3 s), and you still end up with 5 billion megaton blasts, sustained for 10 minutes. Would the teaspoon of mass survive that long? No. I'm pretty sure that the first quarter nanosecond of release would be sufficient to ruin anything on a human scale.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- powertower 15y agoIf the half-life of a neutron (outside atomic nuclei) is 10 minutes, why is it stable inside a Neutron star and what is it that makes it stable?
- Sandman 15y agoAccording to the article, degeneracy pressure.
- iwwr 15y agoPerhaps the same reason neutrons bound in atoms don't decay.
- pavel_lishin 15y agoI wish he hadn't glossed over this. What is it that keeps them stable in atoms? Edit: Wikipedia isn't very helpful, I may just be too dumb to understand this paragraph: "When bound inside of a nucleus, the instability of a single neutron to beta decay is balanced against the instability that would be acquired by the nucleus as a whole if an additional proton were to participate in repulsive interactions with the other protons that are already present in the nucleus. As such, although free neutrons are unstable, bound neutrons are not necessarily so. The same reasoning explains why protons, which are stable in empty space, may transform into neutrons when bound inside of a nucleus."
- Zaak 15y agoThe basic idea is that a neutron all by itself has a lower energy state available to it, which is to decay into a proton, an electron, and an antineutrino. On the other hand, in the nucleus of a stable atom, a neutron decaying would result in a higher energy state for the whole nucleus. Does that help?
- neutronicus 15y agoThe difference can be explained by potential energy. A neutron decaying in empty space causes a proton and an electron to wink into existence on level ground. A neutron decaying near a proton causes a proton to wink into existence on top of a cliff (the proton's electromagnetic field) and an electron to wink into existence at the bottom of a trench (ditto). As far as what critical line is crossed, I can't really say. In fact, I'm not even sure if QCD / Electroweak Theory are yet able to calculate that.
- iwwr 15y agoWhat would happen if an asteroid (say 30km) impacted a neutron star? Mind you, that rock would be larger, although much less massive. Is it possible for something like that to blast off material from the star? I imagine something like a black hole feeding, the asteroid flattened into a disk and heated up, jets of x-rays from the magnetic poles of the star.
- niels_olson 15y agoIt would undergo something like the crab nebula. The mass would vaporize, but continue in toward the star, accelerating into the gravity well. The electrons would be stripped away as the nuclei accelerated, and eventually (eg, nanoseconds) the nuclei would either bounce off or be absorbed into the outer layer. Probably some of both. From space, it would just look like a bright puff.
- borism 15y agoMind you, that rock would be larger, although much less massive. Is it possible for something like that to blast off material from the star? I doubt it. Second neutron star on the other hand... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PSR_J0737-3039 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PSR_J0737-3039
- kordless 15y agoLooks like someone has been reading Niven. That picture shows a ship built off a General Products #2 hull, and is come straight off the book "Neutron Star": http://ca.pbsstatic.com/l/41/6941/9780345336941.jpg http://ca.pbsstatic.com/l/41/6941/9780345336941.jpg With that hull you could fly past a neutron star and live, if you could survive the tidal forces.
- Vivtek 15y agoThe point of Neutron Star is that the tidal forces kill you - although the #2 hull will be fine.
- ghshephard 15y agoActually, we should be precise - particularly as I first learned about how tides worked from that particularly novel - the tidal forces will only kill you if you are at either extremity of the ship. If you manage to stay balanced right at the very center-of-gravity, you'll be fine. (We'll leave aside, for now, the highly unlikely scenario of a space travelling civilization visiting a neutron star in close orbit and not taking extreme caution regarding it's tidal forces)
- ars 15y agoBut that's impossible to do. Just the length of the human body already counts as not in the very center of gravity.
- JoeAltmaier 15y agoBut the guy in Niven's storey survived! By balancing in the center of his ship.
- biot 15y agoGreat sense of humor: > Do not stand in your cargo bay when you beam up your > neutron star material. I cannot stress this enough.
- saturn 15y agoBased on the rest of the post, I wouldn't want to be anywhere on the ship - in fact I'd like to be quite some distance away. Trillion megaton nuclear device equivalent? Riiight (requisitions shuttle)
- brazzy 15y agoWithout running the numbers, I'd prefer the distance to be meaningfully measurable in light years.
- dfranke 15y agoThat's excessive. As the article mentions, a neutron star can't exceed a few solar masses. You're much less than a light year from the sun without any ill effects from its gravity.
- ams6110 15y agoIn case you're looking for a talking point for your next cocktail party, you might also be interested in knowing that degeneracy pressure (of electrons, rather than neutrons) are also what hold up white dwarves. I can quite definitely state that I've never been to a party where that kind of observation would gain anyone's attention. In fact I'm picturing the audience backing away slowly, looking around for someone---anyone---else to talk to. Not sure if that's good or bad.
- saturn 15y agoLast party I went to there were literally no non-techies present. That kind of fact would definitely have gotten you some points. Good or bad? I'm not sure. At least you know some non-techies. In my social circle, being a windows user marks you as a target for victimisation. Using IE makes you an enemy. Not even knowing about OSs and their politics - let alone physics - makes you a second class subhuman non-participant. Again, good or bad? I'm not sure. Time will tell I guess
- BoppreH 15y agoI have actually heard people cursing at others with "you are not even a proper nerd!". Strange times and strange places.
- eneveu 15y agoI think that's the joke.
- leon_ 15y agohere's a more readable format: http://m.io9.com/5805244/what-would-a-teaspoonful-of-neutron-star-do-to-you http://m.io9.com/5805244/what-would-a-teaspoonful-of-neutron...
- augustl 15y agoThanks. That link also works with JavaScript disabled, something the original link doesn't. Makes me shiver when a simple blog requires JavaScript in order to access the content.
- leon_ 15y agothe gawker network (which the io blog is part of) replaced their CMS with some hell-brewn javascript CMS some months ago. their blogs are rendered with JS now - which means without JS you will only see an empty page. oh, and the performance is horrible.
- InclinedPlane 15y agoI find it fascinating that people often talk about science removing the magic of the Universe. And yet, science has revealed amazing, mind-boggling, alien wonders of the Universe that are far more fascinating than any anthropomorphic pantheons. Is there anything in the bible, or in any religious text, that comes close to the story of a supernovae? A supermassive star putting forth unimaginable amounts of light and heat over its few million year lifespan, transmuting its component elements from Hydrogen and Helium all the way to Iron. And then creating this extremely bizarre stuff of neutron star matter during its death throes when it flashes so incredibly brightly that it can briefly outshine the entire galaxy it resides within and can be seen by the naked eye from so far away that it takes longer than the span of time that human beings have used tools for the light to travel that distance. And think, every single human being alive contains within them atoms that were forged in just such an event. To me that's far more awe inspiring than any origin fable.
- JoeAltmaier 15y ago..the Universe is not only stranger than we imagine; it is stranger than we Can imagine.