Winston Blake wrote:
I'm pretty sure it's much more like an ideal gas of neutrons. By virtue of just about everything it shouldn't exist in any particular shape, and if you collected it in one place by cooling it way down, it wouldn't stay like that if it anything gets jogged. 'Neutronium' isn't special, it has nothing holding the neutrons together or limiting their decay, and they'll wander/escape straight through any atoms surrounding them since they're chargeless.
Not so, neutronium exists at atomic density, the nuclear binding force would hold it together if was removed from a neutron star. Gravity is not the only force holding neutronium together. High gravitational force is necessary to form neutronium, but once it has formed other forces take effect. It is not gravity that holds neutronium together; it is the strong nuclear force; the same force that holds atomic nuclei together despite the particle's electromagnetic repulsion.
Because of the density necessary to form neutronium, the neutrons are close enough that the nuclear binding force becomes the primary force acting on it. The only force resisting further collapse is from the size of the nucleons themselves. The force holding our neutronium sample, is far stronger than gravity or electromagnetism.
If you remove neutronium from the intense gravity field which forms it will still have the density of atomic nuclei. The neutrons in neutronium are not free neutrons, they are bound up in large nuclei similar to heavy elements such as uranium, or plutonium. Elements which can remain intact for remain relatively stable for billions of years.
Now a nucleus with an extremely high neutron count will suffer spontaneous beta decay, in which neutrons convert into protons and electrons; just like uranium, etc. The electrons will move away from the nucleus, while the protons will stay in. So, out neutronium sample will decompose into daughter elements over time.
The only unknown is how rapidly neutronium under goes beta decay and what its half-life is. At this point science doesn’t know. That said it could be thousands, millions, even billions of years; we just don't know enough yet.
There shouldn't be anything made of neutronium, but uberness of SW tech confines and stabilises it somehow. They can probably make webs or wires or whatever if they want to.
It just might be possible someday to synthesize in a lab someday. But regardless, neutronium should be spherical regardless of the quantity involved. Whatever the samples size it is essentially a single atomic nuclease, even a neutron star is one large nucleus. So, if were discussing neutronium armor or anything else for that matter. The neutronium in question must be spherical in nature as all atomic nuclei are. Hence, the neutronium pellets I mentioned, so wires should not be a possibility.
The Essential Guide to weapons and technology: states that Dura-armor is created by matrix acceleration. The idea is that the neutronium in some form is integrated into a matrix of conventional armor. That is to say multiple layers made of neutronium embedded in a matrix of Dura-steel. Neutroniums is'nt a metal so it can't be alloyed to the metal in of the armor. So somehow it is suspended within the armors matrix. I would imagine its a lattice, similar to the way palladium can hold hyprogen in its lattice structure. Indeed ICS says that the nretronium is impregnated in the armor, not alloyed to it, nor are there plates of it.
A neutronium armored vessel probably does not require an active system to stabilize its neutronium. It may rely on a passive field of some kind or the properties of the other elements in the armor matrix might stabiles the beta decay. The EU is full of salvaged and wrecked vessel. Many of these vessels had been completely disabled, drifting derelict or even destroyed. If they had required active systems to stabilize them, one could expect their hulls to have decayed.
The neutrons would die in about 15 min. AFAIK The only reason neutron stars last so long is because they're constantly doing electron capture at the same time as beta decay [n -> p+e+ /v then e + p -> n +v], but i suppose it's possible SW armour could be designed to do the same thing, or something more exotic (altering the strength of the weak force, anyone?).
The 15 minutes you quoted is that you speculating or is it from a credible source? So, far as I know the rate of neutronium beta decay is currently unknown. It could be seconds or it could be millions of years. It's possible that it is stable long term like some tranuranic elements are speculated to be.
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