What is a Quark Star?
A quark star is an extremely compressed, exotic object theorized to form out of about 1% of all neutron stars, which in turn form reliably upon the collapse of stars with 1.5 – 3.0 solar masses. Quark stars have not been conclusively observed, but two promising candidates were recorded by the Chandra X-Ray Observatory on April 10th, 2002. One additional candidate has been spotted since, but more evidence is needed before the existence of quark stars can be positively confirmed with a low margin of error. Stars with above about 1.35 solar masses, but less than 3 or so (less than the Tolman-Oppenheimer-Volkoff limit), eventually collapse catastrophically into a neutron star, a compact object the size of a small city. A single teaspoon of neutron star matter weighs two million tons. The gravity is so strong that the tallest “mountains” on a neutron star are only a few mm tall. The quark star is a theorized object even more compact than a neutron star. In a neutron star, it is the degenera
A quark star is an extremely compressed, exotic object theorized to form out of about 1% of all neutron stars, which in turn form reliably upon the collapse of stars with 1.5 – 3.0 solar masses. Quark stars have not been conclusively observed, but two promising candidates were recorded by the Chandra X-Ray Observatory on April 10th, 2002. One additional candidate has been spotted since, but more evidence is needed before the existence of quark stars can be positively confirmed with a low margin of error. Stars with above about 1.35 solar masses, but less than 3 or so (less than the Tolman-Oppenheimer-Volkoff limit), eventually collapse catastrophically into a neutron star, a compact object the size of a small city. A single teaspoon of neutron star matter weighs one billion tonnes (over 1.1 billion tons). The gravity is so strong that the tallest “mountains” on a neutron star are only a few mm tall. The quark star is a theorized object even more compact than a neutron star. In a neutro
These objects are the ‘end stage’ of the evolution of stars and represent objects supported against gravitational collapse, not by the ordinary thermal pressure of hot gases as in normal stars, but by something called degeneracy pressure. White dwarfs are supported by ‘electron degeneracy pressure’ while neutron stars are supported by ‘neutron degeneracy pressure’. Electrons and neutrons are both fundamental particles that have 1/2 unit of quantum mechanical spin and are also called ‘fermions’. We might recall from high school chemistry that the only way you can pack two electrons into the same atomic orbital is if one has its spin ‘up’ while the other has its spin ‘down’. In white dwarfs and neutron stars, the same rule applies because the density of the electron and neutron ‘gas’ is so high that there are pairs of electrons and neutrons for which all the other quantum numbers are the same for the individuals of the pair. This leaves only their spin orientations as a remaining ‘free’
” for “What is a neutron star?”, the response we anticipated. Our researchers got busy immediately and they have discovered that although there is very little known about quark stars, they do exist, and that is a correct response, given the way we phrased that clue, so we have given Milo the $3,800 he would have had.
