By Yvonne Li
(Photo by Shot by Cerqueira on Unsplash)
Think about a substance that it’s so heavy that a spoon of it can fall straight into the ground, so strong that it can destroy anything immediately just by contact. This substance is called strange matter: a mysterious matter hidden deep in the center of neutron stars.
Neutron stars are the densest substance in space except black holes. They are what remains after an explosion of a massive star in a supernova. In their cores, the most dangerous substance in space could be found—strange matter.
Everything in the universe is made of elementary particles called quarks, which are the tiny building blocks of every matter. There are six types of quarks: up, down, charm, strange, top and bottom (Cooper, 2022). On Earth, every proton and neutron are made by up and down quarks, which are the lightest and most stable quarks (Kurzgesagt, 2019).
Other quarks are usually unstable and decay quickly, but in neutron stars, it's a completely different case. Some theories suggest, but it hasn't been proven experimentally that neutron stars consist of up, down, charm, strange, top, and bottom quarks. Quarks melt into one another in a neutron star due to its high pressure, and in the core of the star, some quarks, as some theories suggest, convert into 'strange' quarks. Strange quarks are stronger and heavier quarks with bizarre nucleic properties. Strange quarks can make 'strange substances' that are perfectly dense, perfectly stable, and perfectly indestructible. It's so stable that it could be 'infectious'. When it contacts non-strange matter, the powerful nuclear force can reconfigure the quarks in non-strange matter to match it with strange matter’s perfectly stable low-energy state. Anything that contacts those strange substances is thus also turning into strange substances. Protons and neutrons dissolve into quarks and become strange matters, releasing large amounts of energy and continuing to ‘infect’ others (Conocimiento, 2020).
Strange matter hypothetically only exists in the core of neutron stars, unless two neutron stars collide, causing the neutron stars to spew out droplets of strange matter called strangelets. Strangelets travel through space until they contact a star (or a planet), turning the star into strange matter (Kurzgesagt, 2019).
Some theories suggest that strangelets are more than common. Some scientists even speculated that they could be the dark matter in space that holds the galaxies together.
References
Conocimiento, V. al. (2020, April 30). Strange matter, the last piece in the puzzle of the cosmos. OpenMind. https://www.bbvaopenmind.com/en/science/physics/strange-matter-last-piece-in-puzzle-of-cosmos/
Cooper, K. (2022, November 1). Quarks: What are they? Space.com. https://www.space.com/quarks-explained
Kurzgesagt in a nutshell. (2019). The Most Dangerous Stuff in the Universe - Strange Stars Explained. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_8yK2kmxoo
NASA. (2017, March). Neutron Stars, Pulsars, and Magnetars - Introduction. Nasa.gov; NASA. https://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/science/objects/neutron_stars1.html
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