Quark Star - Strange Star

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.