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NEUTRON STAR MERGERS. “Its contents form a spiral shape surrounding the merger while the larger star continues to get heavier. It grows, becoming more massive, soaking in the superdense material of the erupted star until it can no longer hold itself up against gravity. The star wavers, but finally succumbs into a black hole.” https://lnkd.in/dj52j3n View in LinkedIn

SHITSTORM. “In one of the most violent events in the universe, two neutron stars are gravitationally latched onto one another. They perform a cosmic dance where immense forces draw them together and deform their once neat, round bodies into gnarled and oblong shapes. It takes only a few milliseconds — less than the blink of an eye — for their crusts to shatter open and the less massive star to burst in a gory mess of material.” https://lnkd.in/dj52j3n View in LinkedIn

THE POND. “By looking for ripples in the fabric of space-time, scientists could soon detect "strange stars" — objects made of stuff radically different from the particles that make up ordinary matter.” https://lnkd.in/dtC2gzg View in LinkedIn

STRANGE QUARK DWARFS, (no really). “The researchers noted that strange planets might also orbit what appear to be white dwarfs — the remnants of normal stars that have burned all the hydrogen fuel in their cores — but are actually strange quark dwarfs. They found five exoplanets around white dwarfs orbiting suspiciously close to these stellar remnants, suggesting that they might also be strange planets.” https://lnkd.in/dhCeUnA View in LinkedIn

THE WORST PLAGUE. “A fleck of strange matter traveling fast enough could enter a star or a planet, changing it from the inside out, growing like a bacterial culture that continues to eat. This is one of the most sensational pictures of Earth’s death: the planet struck by and devoured by an unstoppable flood of strange matter. It’s the reason some call strange matter “the most dangerous substance in the universe”. https://lnkd.in/dj52j3n View in LinkedIn

VAPORIZATION. “In principle, strange matter should be heavier and more stable than normal matter. Moreover, it might even be capable of converting ordinary matter it encounters into more strange matter. Previous research suggested that a strange quark star that occasionally spurts out strange matter could quickly convert a neutron star orbiting it in a binary system into a strange quark star in just 1 millisecond to 1 second.” https://lnkd.in/dhCeUnA View in LinkedIn

DO NOT LET THIS IMAGE GO. “As neutrons and protons bleed into the strange matter and morph into the buzzing quark bath, any freed energy will work to further convert more matter into strange matter.” https://lnkd.in/dj52j3n View in LinkedIn

LOWEST ENERGY STATE. “A neutron enters strange matter and dissolves to release its quarks, lowering its energy. This lower energy state is more stable — possibly the most stable energy source in the entire universe.” https://lnkd.in/dj52j3n View in LinkedIn

LABILE. “But strange matter from just after the Big Bang could not have survived up until now. When scientists take into account the early conditions of the universe, thermodynamics, and the expected properties of strange matter, analyses show time and again that strange matter would have evaporated as conditions cooled, lasting until only a second after the Big Bang explosion. This evaporation is also the main reason why strange matter doesn’t make a convincing dark matter candidate.” https://lnkd.in/dj52j3n View in LinkedIn

NEUTRONIUM. “Ordinary neutron stars should have a fluid made almost entirely of neutrons beneath the crust. This is neutronium, a mysterious and extremely dense substance. Just a spoonful of it would weigh more than Earth’s tallest mountain. But this neutronium doesn’t exist just anywhere — it exists at the center of a neutron star where immense pressures can cause the neutrons to melt into quarks. Neutrons are not, after all, elementary particles. Quarks are.” https://lnkd.in/dj52j3n View in LinkedIn