The current hypothetical cosmic object has extremely high density of quark stars. The universe may contain extremely dense and strange imaginary objects, called singular quarks. Although astrophysicists are still arguing about the existence of quark stars, a team of physicists ha

Currently assumed cosmic objects, the density of quark stars is extremely high.

The universe may contain extremely dense and strange imaginary objects, called singular quarks. Although astrophysicists are still arguing about the existence of quark stars, a team of physicists have found that the mass of the neutron star merged wreck observed in 2019 can be just one of these strange quark stars.

When stars die, their cores compress to incredible levels, thus becoming completely new objects. For example, when the sun finally flashes, it will leave behind an white dwarf , a highly compressed carbon atom and oxygen atom spheres of spheres of steroid size. When larger stars explode in a catastrophic explosion called supernova , they leave behind neutron stars. These staggeringly dense objects are only a few miles in diameter, but are several times the mass of the sun. As the name suggests, they are almost entirely made of pure neutrons, which makes them essentially a few kilometers wide nucleus .

neutron stars are so strange that physicists have not fully understood them yet. While we can observe how neutron stars interact with their surroundings and make some good guesses about what happens to all neutron matter near the surface, the composition of their core remains elusive.

problem is that neutrons are not exactly elementary particles. Although neutrons bind to protons to form a nucleus, the neutron itself is composed of smaller particles, , quark, and .

quarks come in six types or "flavors": top, bottom, top, bottom, bizarre and charming. Neutrons consist of two lower quarks and one upper quark . If you press too many atoms together, they will turn into a huge neutron ball. So, if you squeeze too many neutrons together, will they recover into a giant quark ball?

Strange things

Answers range from "maybe" to "this is complicated". The problem is that Quark really doesn't like being alone. The strong nuclear force that binds quarks to the nucleus actually increases with the increase of distance. If you try to pull two quarks together, the force of pulling them back will increase. Eventually, the attraction between them becomes so great that new particles appear in the vacuum, including new quarks, which they are very happy to combine with separate quarks.

If you want to create a macroscopic object with the upper or lower quarks that make up neutrons, the object will explode quickly and violently.

But there may be a path that utilizes singular quarks. The strange quarks themselves are quite heavy, and when they are alone, they quickly decay into lighter upper and lower quarks. However, physics may change when a large number of quarks gather together. Physicists have discovered that strange quarks can combine with upper and lower quarks to form triplets, called " strange quark ", which may be stable - but only under extreme pressure. Just like the pressure on a neutron star.

Here we see the two neutron stars depicted by an artist not long before the merger.

Universe collision

If you compress the neutron star too tightly, all neutrons will lose their ability to support the neutron star, and the entire neutron star will implode and form a black hole. But there may be a step in between, where the pressure is high enough to dissolve neutrons and form a strange quark star, but not enough to allow gravity to be fully controlled.

Astronomers don't expect to find many strange stars in the universe; these objects must be heavier than neutron stars, but lighter than black holes, and there is no great room for maneuver. Because we have not fully understood the physics of singular drop , we do not even know the exact mass that singular stars may exist.

But recently, a group of astronomers observed GW190425, a gravitational wave event caused by the merger of two neutron stars observed in 2019. Accompanied by huge gravitational waves, the merged neutron stars produced , 1,000 Nova , an explosion that is more powerful than ordinary Nova but weaker than supernova.While astronomers were unable to capture the electromagnetic signal of the event, they did see a similar signal in 2017, producing gravitational waves and radiation.

When two neutron stars merge, there are several options based on their mass, spin and collision angle. According to theoretical calculations, neutron stars can annihilate each other, form black holes, or form neutron stars with slightly larger mass.

According to new research recently published on preprint database arXiv, these cosmic collisions could create a kind of weird quark star.

The team calculated that the mass of the objects left after the merger in 2019 is between 3.11 and 3.54 sun mass . Based on our best understanding of the structure of neutron stars, this is a bit too heavy and it should collapse into a black hole. But it is also within the mass range that these strange stellar structure models allow.

It is too early to tell if GW190425 is the first time we have observed a rare singular quark, but future observations (and more theoretical work) may help astronomers determine one of these singular creatures.