Things That Go Bump in the Universe by C. Renée James

Author:C. Renée James
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
Published: 2023-04-15T00:00:00+00:00

— Clash of the Titans —

The universe doesn’t care how a neutron star’s weight limit is surpassed. All that matters is that it is surpassed—whether by the collapse of a too-massive core of a single star or by the merging of objects that individually are well below the maximum mass allowed for a neutron star. In the case of the Hulse-Taylor binary, which will come together in an upcoming geologic era (stay tuned!), the neutron stars weigh in at 1.44 and 1.39 times the mass of the Sun, each essentially at the Chandrasekhar limit. For now, these two are fine, but in 300 million years, they will merge to create something well over 2.5 times the mass of the Sun. When they do, the resulting object will likely be a black hole, but only after a fierce battle. As it turns out, it’s one thing for a stellar core to implode under its own weight, but it’s another thing entirely when two neutron stars experience a close gravitational embrace.

“It isn’t a nice friendly handshake upon coming together. It’s more of a ripping-apart explosion,” astronomer Jeff Cooke explained animatedly, telling me this story as a prelude to another, seemingly unrelated one. “By the end, the intense gravity starts shredding them apart, and they start to get really stretched out, spilling neutrons everywhere. And that’s messy, because if you have a neutron that’s not inside an atom or in a neutron star, it only lasts for about 15 minutes.”

That fact feels like it should get much higher billing in high school chemistry classes. Protons, the positively charged heavyweight cousins of neutrons, apparently have no expiration date, even when left out in the open. At least, that’s what decades of underground Cherenkov detectors like Kamiokande II and its global siblings have told scientists. But making up a large percentage of the familiar material inventory of the universe are particles that, left to their own devices, will self-destruct within a lunch break. When two neutron stars come together, torrents of these particles are unleashed, and the neutron clocks start ticking. Once their internal timers run out, the neutrons spray the area with protons, electrons, and, to satisfy the universal accountant, the antimatter version of a neutrino.

Forcefully shredded from the gravitational prison of the neutron stars, the newly converted protons and escaped neutrons fuse to form atomic nuclei, the very things that the massive star’s core squashed out of existence when it collapsed. In the ensuing mosh pit of protons, neutrons, and atomic nuclei, heavier and heavier elements are forged. It is all in a day’s work for this stellar alchemist to whip up the Earth’s weight in gold, and along with that comes a flood of radioactive elements that will gradually shed bits and pieces of themselves, along with gamma rays, for up to thousands of years.

The electromagnetic energy released from the initial flurry of destruction is considerable, perhaps a tenth of a foe, but this figure pales in comparison to the full foe that two white dwarfs conjure up upon colliding.

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