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Exotic "Electroweak" Star Predicted

Posted by kdawson on from the reunited-at-last dept.

astroengine writes "A new type (or phase) of star has been characterized by Case Western Reserve University scientists in a paper submitted to Physical Review Letters. The 'electroweak' star is a stellar corpse too massive to be a quark star, yet too light to collapse into a black hole. It crushes and burns the quarks inside, generating an outward radiation pressure that acts against gravity. Interestingly, the interior is predicted to be a 'Big Bang factory,' forcing the electromagnetic and weak forces to collapse as one (hence 'electroweak') — a condition that hasn't been seen elsewhere in our universe since moments after the Big Bang." The article notes that the first calculations on electroweak stars pegged them as an intermediate stage on the way to a black-hole collapse, lasting at most a second. The new calculations suggest that electroweak stars could persist for millions of years.

2 of 68 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Precision of calculations by bcmm · · Score: 3, Interesting

    This is not always the case in physics. For example, the differences between the predictions of relativity and Newtonian mechanics are really very insignificant in most cases, but accurate measurement can still tell you which is correct (relativity has agreed with some very, very accurate measurements).

    It doesn't say whether they revised their estimate due to new data or due to finding a mistake, but the latter would be entirely understandable: humans tend to have very little day-to-day experience of exotic matter on which to base a reality check.

    --
    # cat /dev/mem | strings | grep -i llama
    Damn, my RAM is full of llamas.
  2. Quashed Optimism by psnyder · · Score: 2, Interesting
    I'd love to hear about an observed star like this, but at the same time I'm very skeptical of this prediction. We've created strange quarks in particle accelerators, but they decay in 10^-10 seconds. So the prior theory (that they may exist for a brief instant as a stage in the star's collapse) seems to correlate more closely to actual observation. The new theory suggests a way for the star to obtain equilibrium, keeping the quarks in that state while burning them.

    Hopefully now that they know what to look for, we can turn the prediction into observation.

    ...a very small fraction of the energy will be emitted as electromagnetic radiation (i.e. light), making these objects very hard to detect.

    oh...

    Well then, for the time being I'm more inclined to side with the other guy in the article:

    "It highly implausible that such an electroweak star would exist," said Paolo Gondolo of the University of Utah.