Exotic "Electroweak" Star Predicted

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.

Comments

Re:Precision of calculations

[bcmm]

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.