Correction to my above post- the first answer, about the protons+electrons combining, seems to be correct. For more info, check out Introduction to neutron stars.
Quick basic theory- an atom is made up of a small nucleus, which is itself composed of protons (positively charged) and neutrons (charge neutral); and around the nucleus, in various distances, "circle" the electrons (negatively charged). For scale, imagine the nucleus is the Sun, and the electrons are the planets. Then you'll understand how much empty space an atom really is.
And now for your question- a Neutron star is a star that condensed so much that its atoms were stripped of electrons and all that was left were the neutrons and protons (and please don't ask why they don't call it a "Neutrons and Protons" star:-) ).
The mass of the original star was not great enough to further condense the matter to a Black Hole, but great enough so that all the atoms are squeezed together so hard that they lost their electrons.
This mass of nuclei is sometimes refered to as a "soup", because unlike ordinary matter, there are no bonds between the atoms (or what's left of them)- there's no coherent structure. But this is VERY different from a Bose-Einstein condensate.
Hope this helps:-)
If they aren't good for the server market, the 120GXP aren't good for anything- since what regular home user ever needs that much space?
Oh, and BTW, the article also mentions problems with the 75X and 40X drives.
Conclusion- Somebody at IBM QA has screwed up- vote with your $$, folks, and make IBM take notice of this problem- we should not have to replace a HD after only 1 year (or less!) of use!
Try contacting Mark Edel (edel@ltx.com), the team leader of NEdit. Apparently, he had to deal with similiar issues when releasing NEdit under the GPL (read the question titled "License" at http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/10/27/151624 3&mode=thread).
Slashdot Mirror
Correction to my above post- the first answer, about the protons+electrons combining, seems to be correct. For more info, check out Introduction to neutron stars.
Quick basic theory- an atom is made up of a small nucleus, which is itself composed of protons (positively charged) and neutrons (charge neutral); and around the nucleus, in various distances, "circle" the electrons (negatively charged). For scale, imagine the nucleus is the Sun, and the electrons are the planets. Then you'll understand how much empty space an atom really is.
And now for your question- a Neutron star is a star that condensed so much that its atoms were stripped of electrons and all that was left were the neutrons and protons (and please don't ask why they don't call it a "Neutrons and Protons" star :-) ).
The mass of the original star was not great enough to further condense the matter to a Black Hole, but great enough so that all the atoms are squeezed together so hard that they lost their electrons.
This mass of nuclei is sometimes refered to as a "soup", because unlike ordinary matter, there are no bonds between the atoms (or what's left of them)- there's no coherent structure. But this is VERY different from a Bose-Einstein condensate. Hope this helps :-)
If they aren't good for the server market, the 120GXP aren't good for anything- since what regular home user ever needs that much space?
Oh, and BTW, the article also mentions problems with the 75X and 40X drives.
Conclusion- Somebody at IBM QA has screwed up- vote with your $$, folks, and make IBM take notice of this problem- we should not have to replace a HD after only 1 year (or less!) of use!
AstroMage