A New Galactic Object Discovered: The Quark Star

Over the past three years three supernova explosions have left astronomers baffled. Not because of their locale or any such mundane mystery as that, but because they were too bright. 100 times brighter, to be more precise. And astronomers have been completely mystified as to why these three were so much brighter than any other supernova explosion.

Now, researchers in Canada believe that they can add an explanation to this mystery.

They have analyzed the data from the three supernova explosions, including data from the California Institute of Technology's (Caltech) Palomar Observatory and confirmed by the High-Performance Wireless Research and Education Network (HPWREN), funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), and they believe that a new category of object known as a quark star.

A quark is, unlike what some Star Trek fans will attempt to tell you, a “generic type of physical particle,” according Wikipedia, and which, according to the NSF, “are the fundamental components of protons and neutrons, which make up the nucleus of atoms.”

Thus, a quark star is an object made up of ultra dense quark matter. Prior to such a discovery, the most dense object in the universe was a neutron star, a star composed entirely out of neutrons, packed tightly together like the proverbial sardine can. And though an average neutron star is only 16 miles across, it has a mass one and a half that of our own Sun.

A neutron star is formed by the death of a normal star, through a supernova. The new theory presents the thought that, what happens if a neutron star is too tightly packed, and itself explodes, what is left? The Canadian researchers believe that a quark star would be what is left behind. The energy from that explosion is created by neutrons breaking down in to their own building blocks, quarks.

The researchers will continue to look at this, hoping to gain further evidence for their theories.

Josh Hill.

Source link:

http://www.nsf.gov/discoveries/disc_summ.jsp?cntn_id=111683&org=NSF&from=news

Comments

[Alfie]

And what happens when a quark star is too massive to support itself, and it too goes supernova? It's turtles all the way down

[PK]

Please stop mumbling about "new, never seen before particles and forms of matter" - get some balls and try to explain using etherodynamics theory - you'll see how easy to explain everything even for middle-schoolers =) Way easier to comprehend instead of endless "new type of matter" fairy tales - it's all ol'good ether vortexes of different density.

[Qev]

A too-massive quark star collapses into a black hole. Simple.

[Charles Crowley]

Might a rotating quark star resemble an extremely rapidly rotating pulsar? Have any such been detected that could be remnants of these explosions in the past?

[Jaker]

Pulsar, Quark Star, these are all the opposite of a black hole. This is the light that is sucked into the mass of the black hole being expelled.

[Jaker]

Pulsar, Quark Star, these are all the opposite of a black hole. This is the light that is sucked into the mass of the black hole being expelled.

[Captain_Sakonna]

This Star Trek fan knows that a quark is a particle. THE Quark is a different matter entirely. :)