Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey brain Stuff, Lauren Vogel bomb here with another classic
Speaker 1: episode from the vault. This one gets into the weird
Speaker 1: astrophysics of the strongest known material in the universe, Nuclear pasta,
Speaker 1: Hey brain Stuff, Laurin Vogel bomb here. Nuclear pasta might
Speaker 1: sound like a fancy concoction cooked up by a chef
Speaker 1: working in molecular astronomy, but it's actually light years away,
Speaker 1: literally from the spaghetti you'd find in the kitchen. This
Speaker 1: weird kind of noodle is needed below the crust of
Speaker 1: neutron stars, and in a new study, a powerful computer
Speaker 1: simulation has taken a stab at manipulating this stellar noodle
Speaker 1: and found that it's the strongest material in the cosmos.
Speaker 1: So how did this nuclear pasta become the super Macaroni
Speaker 1: of the universe. Well, it's because it's created inside neutron stars,
Speaker 1: which act like extreme pressure cookers. Neutron stars are these
Speaker 1: stellar corpses of massive stars that have run out of
Speaker 1: fuel and exploded as supernova. These tiny, fast spinning objects
Speaker 1: are only a dozen or so miles wide and yet
Speaker 1: pack in the entire mass of our Sun. They're so
Speaker 1: dense that only a teaspoonful of neutron star matter weighs
Speaker 1: as much as a mountain on Earth. Neutron stars are
Speaker 1: therefore not composed of normal matter, but rather what astrophysicists
Speaker 1: call degenerate matter. It's not an insult, it's just the
Speaker 1: term for extremely compact neutrons that are crushed together under
Speaker 1: incredibly powerful gravitational forces. A neutron star is extreme gravity
Speaker 1: makes its outer layers freeze solid as a crust with
Speaker 1: a liquid core below. Underneath the crust, powerful forces royal
Speaker 1: between the neutrons and protons inside the neutron stars matter,
Speaker 1: causing the material to take on some surprising shapes like
Speaker 1: long cylinders and flat planes. Astrophysicists refer to these shapes
Speaker 1: as things like lasagna, spaghetti, and nioki, and collectively as
Speaker 1: nuclear pasta. As astrophysicists get to make their own fun.
Speaker 1: Understanding how this nuclear pasta works is a key concern.
Speaker 1: Researcher Matthew Kaplan, a postdoctoral research fellow at McGill University,
Speaker 1: set in a statement, the strength of the neutron star crust,
Speaker 1: especially the bottom of the crust, is relevant to a
Speaker 1: large number of astrophysics problems, but isn't well understood their
Speaker 1: outer layers, the part we actually observe, so we need
Speaker 1: to understand that in order to interpret astronomical observations of
Speaker 1: these stars. To get a better understanding of this noodlely
Speaker 1: mess Kaplan and his team created the most complex computer
Speaker 1: simulation ever carried out on neutron star crusts to understand
Speaker 1: how they warp and break. It turns out that nuclear
Speaker 1: pasta is way beyond Al Dente. It's the strongest known
Speaker 1: material in the universe. This is especially important as physicists
Speaker 1: can now measure gravitational waves, the ripples in space time
Speaker 1: caused by massive cosmic objects like neutron stars and black
Speaker 1: holes spinning, colliding, and merging. The st of neutron stars
Speaker 1: is therefore very important for science to understand. In fact,
Speaker 1: lone neutron stars may produce their own weak gravitational waves
Speaker 1: by creating rigid mountains in their crests. As neutron stars spin,
Speaker 1: these mountains would disturb space time like a propeller cutting
Speaker 1: through a calm lake surface, generating a constant source of
Speaker 1: gravitational waves that we may be able to detect in
Speaker 1: the future. Kaplan said, a lot of interesting physics is
Speaker 1: going on here under extreme conditions, and so understanding the
Speaker 1: physical properties of a neutron star is a way for
Speaker 1: scientists to test their theories and models. With this result,
Speaker 1: many problems need to be revisited. How large a mountain
Speaker 1: can you build on a neutron star before the crust
Speaker 1: breaks and it collapses, What will it look like, and
Speaker 1: most importantly, how can astronomers observe it? So the next
Speaker 1: time you're boiling your penny, take a minute to ponder
Speaker 1: the mountains of nuclear Pasta that could feed us a
Speaker 1: lot about the nature of neutron stars. Today's episode is
Speaker 1: based on the article nuclear Pasta is the super Macaroni
Speaker 1: of the Universe on how stuff Works dot com, written
Speaker 1: by Ian O'Neill. Brain Stuff is production of iHeart Radio
Speaker 1: in partnership with how stuff Works dot Com, and it's
Speaker 1: produced by Tyler Clang. Four more podcasts my Heart Radio,
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