Why a Quark Star Could Be Stranger Than a Neutron Star

Could a star even stranger than a neutron star be hiding in our galaxy? In this deep dive into one of astrophysics' biggest open questions, we explore quark stars: hypothetical objects where the neutrons themselves may dissolve into a sea of free quarks under unimaginable pressure. Neutron stars are already the densest confirmed objects in the universe, packing more than the mass of the sun into a sphere the size of a city. But at their cores, matter may cross a threshold no laboratory on Earth can reach. We explain quark confinement, asymptotic freedom and deconfinement, then untangle the crucial differences between quark stars, hybrid stars and strange stars. You will learn about the strange matter hypothesis, self-bound stars with no minimum mass, electric fields strong enough to tear particles from empty space, and colour superconductivity. Sources: Annala, E., Gorda, T., Kurkela, A., Nättilä, J., and Vuorinen, A. (2020). Evidence for quark-matter cores in massive neutron stars. Nature Physics, 16, 907 to 910. https://arxiv.org/abs/1903.09121 Alford, M., Braby, M., Paris, M., and Reddy, S. (2005). Hybrid stars that masquerade as neutron stars. The Astrophysical Journal, 629, 969 to 978. https://arxiv.org/abs/nucl-th/0411016 Doroshenko, V., Suleimanov, V., Pühlhofer, G., and Santangelo, A. (2022). A strangely light neutron star within a supernova remnant. Nature Astronomy. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41550-022-01... LIGO Scientific Collaboration and Virgo Collaboration (Abbott, B. P., et al.). (2017). GW170817: Observation of gravitational waves from a binary neutron star inspiral. Physical Review Letters, 119, 161101. https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.1... Witten, E. (1984). Cosmic separation of phases. Physical Review D, 30, 272. #QuarkStar #NeutronStar #Astrophysics #StrangeMatter #GravitationalWaves #SpaceDocumentary #Physics