Can concentrated "neutron star" matter exist in the absence of high gravity?
447612
one of the properties of a neutron star (as far as i can tell) is that the electrons and the protons are so tightly packed that they form in to neutrons. But they are not bound together like they are in the nucleus of an atom.  \n\nThere is actualy a great statmech problem where you are suposed to calulate the radius of a neutron star using only the pauli exclution principle (basicly that fermions have the tendency to repell each other)\n\nat the moment there are two known things that are even denser... a black hole for one, and the neuclus of an atom. \n\nIf there was a free existing small part of a black hole, it would just explode in a matter of moments (~10^-14 sec i think).  as for a neutron star they would also fly appart because for the pauli exclution principle.  But if we have a huge mass of protons and neutron we would have a very very very very heavy atom.  It would attract electrons just like a normal atom.  But it would decay in just moments(problably very violently).   \n\nIt can be made, but it would exist in such small quantity and for so short of a time that it would seemingly have no properites
188040
Absolutely.\n\nIt is now thought (and even more radio telescope survey evidence on this has just come in) that at the very beginning of things (the Big Bang) there was nothing but energy. As the Universe expanded and cooled, elementary particles were formed from that energy, and some time later, things cooled enough for atoms to form and stay together. Since it takes force to push protons together (to form nuclei of the higher atomic number atoms), and the force wasn't available, only hydrogen (and a very small amount of helium and perhaps an even smaller amount of lithium -- the simplest atoms) resulted.\n\nLots of hydrogen, distributed in a sort of clumpy manner, will eventually collapse into stars. Large stars burn through their available fuel relatively quickly, all the while forcing together protons into more complex atoms such as carbon and oxygen and silicon, and so on. When these large stars go nova, they spray a good part of themselves into interstellar space where the material is incorporated into newly forming stars or collected into clouds around them. As those clouds collapse into planets (which must be very common as we have now seen some hundreds of them around stars in the local area in our galaxy (ie, within a few hundred light years)), the non-hydrogen material in them is actually star stuff. Probably not really dust particles in most cases, but...\n\nAnd that's how it was. Fascinating stuff.
201963
Gravity is only half of the picture.\n\nThe stars gravity does tend to pull the stars material towards the center of the star.\n\nHowever, there is also an expansive force - the force of the nuclear fusion reaction that is taking place inside the start.  This reaction creates light, heat, x-rays, cosmic rays and so on.. but it also pushes against the infalling star material, trying to push it back out.\n\nThe balance between gravity and fusion energy is why the star stays (about) the same size.\n\nSometimes gravity wins, and the star compresses all the way town to a neutron star or even a black hole.\n\nSometimes the nuclear reaction wins and the star explodes in a nova or supernova.\n\nMost stars are stable for a VERY long time (billions of years).
394958
Sorry, but we've ruled out the majority of dark matter being massive concentrations of mass (small black holes etc).  Things like that can be detected in gravitational lens searches, and the numbers of lensing events that we have detected pretty much rules out any type of "massive compact" dark matter being the bulk of what is out there.  This leaves us looking for even more exotic stuff - there is likely a nobel out there for someone who figures it out.\n\nAs for directly answering the question... I'm really at a loss to even begin to understand what is being said there.
621991
I dont have an actual numerical percentage for you, but yes, matter is mostly made up of just empty space.\nThere not only is lots of empty space in between atoms, but also, the atom itself is mostly empty space as well.\nWhen you scale an atom into normal terms, the VAST majority of its mass is concentrated in an extremely mall area (the nucleus) and its electrons orbit very far away (in relative terms).
419595
Gravity is relative, so there are no two points in space with precisely the same amount of gravity.  There will always be some gravitational pull even at very far away distances from other objects.  In fact even things which weigh almost nothing like light is affected by gravity.  Light waves can are bent by gravity which is why stars "twinkle".  Hope that was helpful.\n\nBy the way, the person named "Carbon based" who answered the question had a very nice equation but gave a way oversimplified answer.  He assumes there are only 2 objects in space.  The object and the second one with gravitational pull.  However, your "gravity" will be affected by every single object in the universe, not just the closest body.
636436
As much as Sci-Fi wants it to be something exotic, I'm afraid there is no "other side" to a black hole.\n\nImagine an atom of normal matter. Most of it is empty space. But it takes a great deal of pressure to compress it --- more pressure than is usually available. But if we concnetrate enough mass, the gravitational force will be strong enough that the space can be compressed. Protons (positive charge) and electrons (negative charge) will be pressed together to form neutrons (neutral charge). This happens in the core of very large stars at the end of their life. Their last stage of fusion produced iron at the core. When enough iron exist at the core, it suddenly collapses as I've described here. It then forms what is called a neutron star. If it is oriented just right with respect to the earth, it also appears as a pulsar (Internet search: pulsar +star +radio).\n\nThe neutron star is extremely dense. But there is still a force exerted by the neutrons which keeps the compression from going any further. But what if the mass was large enough to overcome that force and squeeze it even smaller. It appears that once this happens, there is nothing left to stop the compression and it continues until the object takes up no space at all, which is why it is sometimes called a singularity. It is a point in space with a huge mass and therefore extremely strong gravity.\n\nAll objects exert a gravitational pull on other objects. And therefore all distort space and bend the path that light takes. But this new object is so compressed that near it, the gravity is so strong that the path of light beams are looped back and cannot leave the object. Since no light can escape from it and anything nearby falls into it and disappears, it is called a black hole.\n\nMoving out from the black hole, we finally find a distance where light can barely escape. The line that divides where light can and cannot escape from the black hole is called the event horizon. It is not a "surface" of the black hole as there is nothing there. It is merely the distance at which the gravity drops enough that light can escape. If you could build a camera and drop it though the event horizon, nothing would change as it went through. No difference would be recorded. However the radio transmission from the camera would cease as radio is the same as light, just a different frequency. Once the camera went past the event horizon, it would no longer be able to transmit the pictures to you. The radio waves would loop back and head into the black hole. There are also some strange things that happen to time as you cross the even horizon, but you can run an Internet search to find out more.\n\nBecause it has compressed to the point of not taking up space, conventional physics expressions for matter no longer make sense in this environment. You end up with fractions where the volume or distance is in the denominator (lower half of the fraction) and therefore the fraction has an infinite value --- which doesn't make sense. So we can't really project what is going on inside. But the idea that it is a portal to other dimensions is more SciFi than science. There are some esoteric theories that guess about such things, but they are guesses. \n\nHope this helps\n\nIf you are interested in astronomy, try \nhttp://groups.yahoo.com/group/lunar-observing/\n\nChuck
891624
i'm not sure how you consider it mathematically unlikely - where's your working for that?\n\nThe theory is that yes, the matter in the universe can from the dense plasma that expanded from the singularity that began the big bang.  Howver, if dark matter theory is to be believed, there is a lot of matter unaccounted for - but it is still likely to have originated from the Big Bang
1179398
That is a very good question. We currently do not know definitively the answer to this question. Thousands of years ago, the Greeks believed that all matter were composed of some indivisble units called "atoms". This was irrefutably proven by Einstein at the turn of the 20th century (and he received a Nobel Prize for it). However, as we probe further, we discovered that even atoms has internal structure: protons, neutrons and electrons. For awhile we thought that was it, but then later we found that protons and neutrons were also made of more fundamental particles called quarks (now confirmed by experiements).\n\nSo is this it? Quarks is the final indivisible unit? It turns out that it is most likely not the case. The reason is not that we have discovered anything smaller than quarks. The reason is because our 2 current theories of the physical world, quantum mechanics and theory of general relativity, are not compatible with each other. What this means is that these 2 theories are not completely correct. They are good for most situations, but they can not explain objects like black holes or explain the big bang (the beginning of the universe). There are other things that these 2 theories can't explain, but I won't go into that right now.\n\nThese serious flaws has been the mother of all physics problems for the most of the 20th century. The Holy Grail of modern physics is to find a single theory that can combine the 2 theories together and explain all physical phenonmenons. So far we have one candidate: Superstring Theory.\n\nSo in our effort to solve this problem, we created String Theory, which tells us that quarks are not the fundamental building blocks of matter, but tiny filaments of vibrating energy called Strings. They are much much smaller than quarks. Quarks are estimated to be about to 10^-16 centimeters, but strings are around 10^-33 centimeters. So is this it? We really don't know for sure, but all the signs points to a yes (I won't explain why here because it's too long and it wasn't your question.).\n\nSo does this imply that matter/energy always existed? The answer is NO. because the universe is about 14 billion years old. That's how long anything has existed, including all the matter and energy.
542537
I would think there may be as many as six. I asked a question on here a few months ago, trying to find out if it were possible for matter to have mass but not take up space and vice versa. I think it's completely possible and if it is, I like to call it inverse matter. That would be the 6th state of matter and might be descriptive of "black holes".
214575
It is true that nobody knows. It is false that theories on the origin of matter are wild speculations. See an earlier post I did today on an almost identical question for a reasonable theory for the origin of matter out of nothing.\n\nIn short, the fact is that matter appears out of nowhere all the time. There's is no reason to think it could not do a slightly more extreme version of the same thing if the vacuum state were changed a little bit, ie. its energy density was increased.
70654
Here is an answer i found in physlink.com\n\n"Stars and Planets form as a result of the gravitational collapse of accreting material. Any net translational motion of that initial material is accelerated as its radius of rotation decreases. This is due to the same conservation of angular momentum principle that makes skaters and divers spin more rapidly when they bring their arms closer to their bodies. In its extreme, this effect can make collapsed neutron starts spin many times each second, creating the regular beat of pulsars as observed from Earth.\n\nOnce an initial spin was established for the Earth, the same conservation principle says that its angular momentum will continue unless it can be transferred to another object. With no significant frictional forces to allow that to happen, the Earth can continue to spin indefinitely without any further prodding."\n\nCourtesy:- http://www.physlink.com/Education/askexperts/ae201.cfm\n\n\nBy the way...The speed of rotational (of Earth) at the equator is about 1,000 miles per hour.
784467
The center of our galaxy is obscured by dust and celestial bodies in visible light.\n   Longer wave lengths , infrared and radio waves give an unfocused view of the center.\n   The cosensus is that a massive black hole inhabits the center.\n   Astronomers have reasoned the existance of the black hole by the unusual movement of stars in that area.\n   Thier reasoning is quite persuasive but several points belie this reasoning.\n   The stars orbit the black hole in highly elliptical orbits slingshoting out at incredible speed.\n   A star is a sturdy entity in its place but would be very fragile and vulnerable racing past  a black hole.[Remember, some years ago,the comet that crashed into Jupiter,it landed in pieces because of the tidal forces on its last trajectory, broke it up]\n   These stars that seem to race past a black hole would shed most,if not all their mass and would not complete the orbit.\n   Then what is at the center of our galaxy? This may take some inovation,but it is not a black hole because black holes are nonviable entities.\n  They would be anamolies among celestial bodies.No upper limit to their size.\n   The surface would trap light at "C".THe quantum effect would allow a small percentage of photons to spiral outward.producing a slight glow in white light.\n   Anything that penetrated the event horizon would have to exceed "C"[Time dilation notwithstanding]\n   This would leave the other end of the quantum effect with slower than "C"photons,that could not spiral out could not spiral in and could not maintain orbit!\n   So what the heck is at the center of our galaxy??\n   The answer may depend on the question;What the heck happens to a neutron star if black holes do not exist??!!
659657
We know of no science that would permit Star Trek like gravity, which appears to be some kind of machine that can be turned off and on to make gravity. But I suppose some new discovery could make it possible. We just can't count on that.
618210
Not due to gravitational pull?!
574838
It can and does. Most of the universe is empty space, with no matter or energy in it. Unless you mean all of space, as a whole. In which case, it doesn't exist devoid of matter and energy, and it is highly unlikely that it ever would. (Almost impossible, but no one really knows enough to be able to say that, for certain.) But seeing as how space is simply nothingness, I don't see why it couldn't.
1000866
that's why mass is not wieght, it is not dependent on gravity. so yes