![]() ![]() As those stars rotate (and neutron stars can rotate extremely quickly), those raised lumps could theoretically create ripples in the surrounding space-time - also known as gravitational waves. According to a 2007 NASA blog post, a sugar cube's worth of matter would weigh more than 1 billion tons inside a neutron star - roughly the weight of Mount Everest.Īccording to the new research, nuclear pasta may become so strong and so densely packed that it could even layer up to form small "mountains" that could lift the crust of some neutron stars. To exist under such extreme conditions, everything in a neutron star becomes much, much heavier than it would be anywhere else in the universe. To visualize how insanely dense that is, imagine cramming the mass of 1.3 million Earths into a single American city. As a result, neutron stars pack an entire sun's worth of mass (or more) into a compact core about 12 miles (20 kilometers) across. Nuclear pasta is thought to exist only inside neutron stars, which form when massive stars (at least eight times the mass of Earth's sun) collapse under their own gravity. Much of nuclear pasta's strength likely comes from its density. " may make nuclear pasta the strongest material in the known universe," the researchers wrote in their new paper. The team determined that, to shatter a plate of nuclear pasta, it could take about 10 billion times the force needed to shatter steel. ![]() In a new study soon to be published in the journal Physical Review Letters (and prepublished in the online journal ), a team of researchers from the United States and Canada ran a series of computer simulations to test the strength of nuclear pasta, based on all that is known about the neutron- star conditions under which it forms. ![]() Unlike earthly noodles, however, nuclear pasta may be the strongest substance in the universe. Just like your nonna's pasta, nuclear pasta makes great leftovers (it may be pretty much the only matter that can survive in a star after a supernova). ![]()
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