Strange Star
Recent theoretical research has found mechanisms by which quark stars with "strange quark nuggets" may decrease the objects' electric fields and densities from previous theoretical expectations, causing such stars to appear very much like—nearly indistinguishable from—neutron stars. However, the team of Prashanth Jaikumar, Sanjay Reddy and Andrew W. Steiner made some fundamental assumptions that led to uncertainties in their theory large enough that the case for it is not yet solid. More research, both observational and theoretical, remains to be done on strange stars in the future.
Other theoretical work contends that, "A sharp interface between quark matter and the vacuum would have very different properties from the surface of a neutron star"; and, addressing key parameters like surface tension and electrical forces that were neglected in the original study, the results show that as long as the surface tension is below a low critical value, the large strangelets are indeed unstable to fragmentation and strange stars naturally come with complex strangelet crusts, analogous to those of neutron stars.
Read more about this topic: Quark Star
Famous quotes containing the words strange and/or star:
“A familiar name cannot make a man less strange to me. It may be given to a savage who retains in secret his own wild title earned in the woods. We have a wild savage in us, and a savage name is perchance somewhere recorded as ours.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The eager fate which carried thee
Took the largest part of me:
For this losing is true dying;
This is lordly man’s down-lying,
This his slow but sure reclining,
Star by star his world resigning.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)