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