Astronomers Find FIRST of New Star Type | The Strange Quark Star
Supernovas light up the dark corners of the cosmos and are known to leave behind some
of the most fascinating objects in the universe, neutron stars.
These stellar remnants can come in several different types and astronomers believe that
they have just found proof of a new type of neutron star, one that had previously only
been known to exist in theory.
Theoretical Stars
At the end of the life of large stars, they explode in a BRILLIANT supernova, spewing
the outer layers of their mass out into space creating beautiful nebula as their cores compress
and become incredibly dense.
If the cores are large enough, as they compress they begin to collapse into a black hole,
ripping a hole in the fabric of space time.
But if the stellar core does not contain enough mass to fully collapse into a black hole,
the dense cores can condense to form neutron stars in which electrons and protons are forced
together by IMMENSE gravitational forces to form a SOLID mass of neutrons.
Some have theorized that in very special cases, these neutron stars can take their transformation
one level FURTHER, and become something entirely new, a strange quark star.
Recently a group of physicists, led by Dr. Sedaghat based out of Shiraz University in
Iran, have worked long hours pouring over the information gathered from a leftover mass
of a neutron star merger originally detected in two thousand and nineteen, that may be
the PERFECT candidate for a quark star.
This object, now named GW190425, appears to be the best shot that astronomers have ever
had at finding the theoretical strange quark star.
Neutron Stars
Astronomers have long attempted to probe into the bodies of neutron stars in an attempt
to understand how they function.
Thus far they have only been able to observe what is happening on the surface of these
stars as well as their effects on their surroundings due to the intense environment that exists
beneath their surface.
Scientists know that if neutron stars become TOO dense, they can implode and collapse into
a newly formed black hole, but this recent study has hinted that there may be an intermediate
step in between a neutron star and a black hole that has been missing from the models.
This intermediate form would occur when the pressures are so high that the neutrons themselves
dissolve into the elementary particles that make them up, quarks.
Strange quarks
While neutrons are subatomic particles, they are not one of the fundamental particles that
cannot be broken down further.
In fact, they are made up of several smaller particles we refer to as quarks.
And these quarks come in six different types that scientists call flavors.
There are up, down, top, bottom, strange, and charm quarks.
In the case of neutrons, they are composed of one up quark and two down quarks.
So if a neutron star was compressed ENOUGH, the solid ball of neutrons SHOULD become a
solid ball of quarks, right?
But that's not quite what happens, partly because quarks really don’t like to be on
their own, they prefer to be bound to other partners.
So when the neutrons that make up neutron stars dissolve into quarks, the force that
binds them together has a hard time keeping them together.
The force that holds quarks together in a particle is called the strong force, which
is mediated through the particles known as gluons.
One interesting fact about the strong force is that it gets exponentially stronger as
the distance between the quarks held together grows.
So as two quarks move further apart, the force drawing them together gets grows larger and
if they get far enough apart, a new quark will appear out of the vacuum.
Weird right?
These new quarks want to bond to other quarks much more readily than other quarks and could
be the missing link that explains how a neutron star can become a quark star.
Now if we were to try and compose a macroscopic object out of up and down quarks, it would
explode nearly instantly in an extremely violent event.
But models show that this may not be the case when another type of quark, the strange quark,
is added to the mix.
Strange quarks by themselves will decay rapidly into the lighter up quark and down quark,
but when there are large enough numbers of quarks smashed together, the physics may change.
When these quarks are added in, the new model shows that a stable body formed entirely of
quarks CAN form.
Did they find a strange quark star?
So how can they determine if they really did find a quark star?
Under extreme pressure, like that found in an extremely dense neutron star, strange quarks
can bind with up and down quarks to form a bizarre new particle that remains stable under
these conditions, the (strange-let) strangelet.
While looking at the gravitational wave event caused by two neutron stars known as GW190425,
astronomers believe they may have found a special scenario in which a strange quark
star may have been created.
These gravitational waves were caused by two massive neutron stars colliding together.
The outcome of a neutron star collision can go a few ways which are determined by the
spin of both bodies, as well as the speed and angle at which they collide.
In certain scenarios, they can annihilate each other entirely, form an object with enough
mass to create a new black hole, OR they can form a more massive neutron star that may
be born in the violent aftermath.
The collision also caused a kilonova which is a type of explosion in between the energy
levels of a nova and a supernova sending out a blast wave of electromagnetic radiation.
Unfortunately, for this event, astronomers were not able to capture the radiation that
was likely given off during this merger.
A similar event several years early gave them a relatively good idea of what they should
have expected to see in the emitted radiation.
The information contained within this radiation could hold a special signature that points
DIRECTLY towards the creation of strangelets.
Now astronomers are waiting to find more clues in the data they have from GW190425 or to
detect a new collision between neutron stars that had a similar result.
The features of this star
From the information gathered, astronomers believe that the outcome of this collision
was the birth of a larger neutron star which is what they would expect would lead to the
birth of a quark star.
After analyzing all of the information, the team of researchers calculated the mass of
the leftover object was between three point one one and three point five four solar masses.
Based on the current understanding of neutron stars, one of this size should sit ABOVE the
threshold of mass required to create a black hole, but that is not what happened here.
The new model of neutron stars shows that this object falls within the mass range that
would theoretically lead to the formation of a strange quark star instead of fully collapsing
into a black hole.
With a little more confirmation, this massive discovery may shed more light on the many
mysteries of our cosmos including objects that have eluded scientists so far.
What now?
It is now time for the team of astronomers to look for a way to confirm that this object
is in fact a strange quark star.
In order to do this, additional information from the object may be needed, perhaps the
James Webb Space Telescope will turn its gaze towards this puzzling object in the near future.
There are no other theories that have even come close to explaining why this object didn’t
collapse into a singularity, so for now, the theory of the strange quark star will stay
at the top of the list.
Only once more evidence is found that confirms that this is in fact a strange quark star,
astronomers will continue to try to unravel the secrets within this event.
Outro
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