Talk:Neutronium

Article says:

The mass of any neutronium body can be no more than 1.4 times the mass of the Sun

I've noticed thats the same as the Chandrasekhar limit. But the Chandrasekhar limit works on the mass of the star pre-collapse, not post-collapse (like a neutron star). Is this a conincedence, has someone got things confused, or is there something deep and meaningful going on here? -- SJK

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Somebody has thing confused. Actually, I had never heard a reference to neutronium, though is true that neutron stars are supported by neutron degeneracy pressure. But the mass it can suppot is about 3 M_sun (depends on the equation of state, that is not completely certain). I'll try to review it later. AN

thanks. The reference I was working from appeared to have been babelfished at some point, it was a little hard to follow some of it. :)

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I made a search and only found the term "neutronium" in a novel "The neutronium alchemist", and sci-fi related pages. The physics of the interior of the core of a neutron star is not well undertood. There is a structure, going from well known iron to unknown superdense matter at the center. Apparently the term "neutronium is used by non experts and sci-fi people to refer to all the unknown physics inside a neutron star. AN

Go to Google and make sure you enter "star" as well as "neutronium", else you get the new-age book "The Neutronium Alchemist". Also try this link from a university physics department: [1] (http://www.physics.uq.edu.au/people/ross/ph227/evolve/whitey.htm)

There's an awful lot of crap on the Web about neutronium, which is one of the main reasons I wanted an entry on it in Wikipedia. :) - BD

If you could be so kind to point me to a single peer reviewed journal reference of "neutronium", i'd be glad. Searchs in the web site of the astrophysical jounal gives 0. Search of the NASA ADS abstract service gives one: an unrefereed paper about the capabilities of a

telescope. The name of your cosmology book would also be appreciated. AN

I found lecture notes from Penn State's astronomy department [2] (http://www.astro.psu.edu/users/steinn/Astro1/Lectures/lec20). I'm posting to the reputable USEnet groups to try and get some references. MMGB

It's not a peer-reviewed journal, but the book "Cosmic Wormholes" by Paul Halpern discusses neutron stars in chapter 3 and it uses that term. I also found a couple of references to it on some of John Baez's web pages, and he appears to be a researcher in the field [3] (http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=+site:math.ucr.edu+neutronium). But ultimately, why does the term need to be used in a peer-reviewed journal before it's legitimate to write an encyclopedia article about it? The word "neutronium" is very widely used, people are going to do searches for neutronium and this article is what they'll be looking for.

I'm not telling that there can not be an article about it. The term exist. The peer reviewed journal thing is to see if reputable researchers use the term, or if is it a sci-fi or fringe-science or popular simplification term. The fact that no

a single astrophysical paper refers to that term, means it is not widely used in the field.

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As I read the UQ reference MB gave it seems to imply a neutron star can be no more massive than 2.6 M_sun.

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Neutronium is also used in many Of Larry Niven's earlier stories. Which is actually why I am researching it. He describes it is being mirror-like. However aren't electrons responsible for the optical properties of a material? Then wouldn't a materail w/o electrons be optically inactive and effectivelt the blackest black you eyes never set upon? -- If you have a convincing answer to this contact me @ http://pthbb.org

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As someone who wrote a doctoral dissertation on supernova...

I think I've seen the term neutronium used in peer reviewed papers, but it's rare. The reason for this is that it's not known whether or not neutron stars are actually made of pure neutrons. The behavior of matter at these high densities is very poorly understood, and so its perfectly possible that the matter is in some weird form like quark soup or such. Fortunately, you can parameterize your ignorance. The only thing that matters in supernova calculations and the like is equation of state which is

pressure = function (density, temperature)

and you can place limits as to what this function can be.

It's also currently believed that neutron degeneracy limit isn't that much more than the chandesekar limit.