Neutronium?

[SVPD]

Ok, what is this stuff supposed to be?

I got into an argument with a guy on The Ranger's Glade over general SW vs ST stuff. He claims that there's some kind of planet destroying thingamajigger in "The Doomsday Machine" which he describes

The hull of the ship in question was only destroyed by a warp core explosion going off inside the device. The hull was left completely unscathed. Neutronium is a theoretical material that would easily resist even the most powerful explosion ever witnessed in SW. It is matter made up entirely of solid neutrons. No gaps, no space between the subatomic particles. Just solidly packed neutrons. Totally unrealistic anywhere outside of the heart of a neutron star but in ST it is possible and therefore indestructible for all intents and purposes

It seemed to me that

a) solid neutronium, if it existed, would have incredible mass and gravity, it would crush anything that tried to work on it
b) even disregarding that problem, it would have not chemical properties at all, so you couldn't really attach it to anything else
c) if it were "indestructible"you couldn't cut or shape it to make anything useful out of it.

So what's the deal with neutronium?

[Bounty]

The hull of the ship in question was only destroyed by a warp core explosion going off inside the device.

Nitpick : tell him to watch the ep again, it's a the impule engines that are detonated.

[SirNitram]

He's exagerrating in most everything; Neutronium is, indeed, matter made of tightly-packed neutrons, but it's not invincible. It just has a truly absurd thermal tolerance. It's actually used in Star Wars armour construction; the current theory has tiny spheres of it laced into the actual metal, meaning the whole thing will soak up huge amounts of thermal energy without even a scratch.

[Ender]

Ok, what is this stuff supposed to be?

Neutronium is a made up scifi term used to describe the material that makes up neutron stars. The correct term is simply "degenerate matter", or if you are talking about the core of the star "strange matter".

I got into an argument with a guy on The Ranger's Glade over general SW vs ST stuff. He claims that there's some kind of planet destroying thingamajigger in "The Doomsday Machine" which he describes

The hull of the ship in question was only destroyed by a warp core explosion going off inside the device. The hull was left completely unscathed.

Nifty little self contradtiction there. It wsn't destroyed, but it was.
And the explosion is question was IIRC stated by Spock in the episode to be ~97 MT. Can someone correct me on tat if I'm wrong?

Neutronium is a theoretical material that would easily resist even the most powerful explosion ever witnessed in SW. It is matter made up entirely of solid neutrons. No gaps, no space between the subatomic particles. Just solidly packed neutrons.

Well, for the middle region of the star this is thouht to be true anyways. The outer layer is just extremely dense normal matter, the middle (and bulk of the star) is a bunch of neutrons, the heart of the star the matter has reached the point where their quarks all spin the same way.

Totally unrealistic anywhere outside of the heart of a neutron star

The heart is actually strange matter, or what some scifi series are now calling quarkinum. But again, that is not an actual scientific term.

but in ST it is possible and therefore indestructible for all intents and purposes

Its a heat sink only, it has no material properties. It would behave like a liquid really.

It seemed to me that

a) solid neutronium, if it existed, would have incredible mass and gravity, it would crush anything that tried to work on it

A sufficient amount of it would yes. It would also try to form inso a spherical shape due to its mass.

b) even disregarding that problem, it would have not chemical properties at all, so you couldn't really attach it to anything else

Quite right

c) if it were "indestructible"you couldn't cut or shape it to make anything useful out of it.

Which nicely proves he's full of it.

So what's the deal with neutronium?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutronium

huh, it contradicts my encyclopedia by saying it is an accepted term, and that's the first I've seen anything about hyperons.

[Darth Wong]

The very notion of solid neutronium is absurd. Solidity is a state of matter which requires chemical bonding, and neutronium is characterized by nuclear bonding, which is fluid.

[SVPD]

Thanks for the info. I was pretty sure he was full of shit

[Glimmervoid]

But dose not real science have to give way to on screen evidence?

[The Silence and I]

Nifty little self contradtiction there. It wsn't destroyed, but it was.
And the explosion is question was IIRC stated by Spock in the episode to be ~97 MT. Can someone correct me on tat if I'm wrong?

No you're quite right, it was 97.835 megatons. I'd say the guy (aside from being full of shit) made a mistake posting that contradiction; regardless the hull was left undamaged. The machinery was screwed over, but the hull seemed quite fine.

but in ST it is possible and therefore indestructible for all intents and purposes

Its a heat sink only, it has no material properties. It would behave like a liquid really.

Which begs the question of what ST neutronium really is, and similarly for SW (IIRC SW neutronium can be found as an ore or something like that).

[Darth Wong]

But dose not real science have to give way to on screen evidence?

Not when the imbecile in question is trying to prove that it's neutronium as described by real science.

[Ender]

but in ST it is possible and therefore indestructible for all intents and purposes

Its a heat sink only, it has no material properties. It would behave like a liquid really.

Which begs the question of what ST neutronium really is, and similarly for SW (IIRC SW neutronium can be found as an ore or something like that).

Well, setting aside the issues with the blurb in CTD that says it was found in a moon (Its a report ot high command by a weasel who went warlord and has the tone of being a bunch of BS to justify a complete shipyard being put under his personal command), it could be that the neutronium there is actually suppossed to be the neuranium mentioned in the ROTS novel, or it could be the strange matter (which might retain its form according to some theories)from the heart of a neutron star that accreted material onto it (though this raises some orbital physics questions).

Anyways, presumably its real neutronium. No idea about the ST crap.

[Glimmervoid]

But dose not real science have to give way to on screen evidence?

Not when the imbecile in question is trying to prove that it's neutronium as described by real science.

O I see he is trying to ignore science and use science at the same time to prove the same thing. He is using the scientific properties of nutronum last ignoring what it is?

[Kuroneko]

Its a heat sink only, it has no material properties. It would behave like a liquid really.

Neutronium is not a liquid, but a gas. As a heat sink, there's a rather substantial utility in it if it is large enough to bind itself gravitationally (let's say it is isolated from the rest of the ship through artificial gravity, which we know the Star Wars universe has), then it will have a negative heat hapacity--dumping heat in it would lower the temperature and density, thus making the neutronium more stable in terms of internal pressure, up to a point.

[dragon]

Its been a while since I saw Think Tank but didn't they have a hull of Neutronium that 7of9 said even the borg can't do.

[Ender]

Its been a while since I saw Think Tank but didn't they have a hull of Neutronium that 7of9 said even the borg can't do.

Yes, but the problem is that since peoople were walking around it with no problems, it can't be real neutronium.

[Enola Straight]

Maybe instead of pure, solid neutronium, it is an alloy or even a composite material:a thin film laminate, sandwiched between layers of more conventional materials.

[omegaLancer]

Its a heat sink only, it has no material properties. It would behave like a liquid really.

Neutronium is not a liquid, but a gas. As a heat sink, there's a rather substantial utility in it if it is large enough to bind itself gravitationally (let's say it is isolated from the rest of the ship through artificial gravity, which we know the Star Wars universe has), then it will have a negative heat hapacity--dumping heat in it would lower the temperature and density, thus making the neutronium more stable in terms of internal pressure, up to a point.

Actually you thinking of degenerative matter, as in White dwarves. Degenerative matter is a gas, Neutronium ( or the stuff we find in neutron stars ) is consider a super liquid due to its higher density and properties.

[Darth Wong]

Actually you thinking of degenerative matter, as in White dwarves. Degenerative matter is a gas, Neutronium ( or the stuff we find in neutron stars ) is consider a super liquid due to its higher density and properties.

The terms "gas" and "liquid" are both encompassed in the term "fluid", which is probably the best term to use.

[frogcurry]

So if I had a glass of neutronium sitting on my desk right now (ignoring the billion ton mass and other such inconsistencies), what would I be looking at? Would this stuff move if I put a spoon in and moved, it like other dense fluids? How does it interact with other matter without chemical bonding like Van der Waals, and the electron repulsion effects? Would it be effected by normal matter it came into contact with (assuming that theres some way to allow both to exist in the same room at the same time using some hand-wavery) since theres no electron shielding in the neutrons... I'm wondering if it would just pass into other matter if it touched it.

Apologies for the mass of questions, but this stuff is hard to get a grasp of in the mind.

[Solauren]

Visually, no idea. Would neutrons even deflect the light?

I'm guessing either pitch black or transparent.

As to moving it, or stirring it, probably not.

Consider that say cake mix, or liquid concreate before drying is alot denser then water, and what it's like to try to mix that.

You're more likely to bend your spoon or otherwise damage it.

[Darth Wong]

It would be a ball, it would not flow into a beaker, its resistance to deformation would be immense, and it would promptly fall through the floor and plunge into the Earth. It may be a fluid, but it is consolidated by very strong nuclear forces.

[Kuroneko]

Actually you thinking of degenerative matter, as in White dwarves. Degenerative matter is a gas, Neutronium ( or the stuff we find in neutron stars ) is consider a super liquid due to its higher density and properties.

That's exactly backwards. A collection of non-interacting fermions is by definition a Fermi gas, which is how the neutron stars are modeled. Interacting fermions form Fermi liquids. White dwarves, which are supported by electron degeneracy pressure, are Fermi liquids.

Visually, no idea. Would neutrons even deflect the light? I'm guessing either pitch black or transparent.

Light does scatter off neutrons, so definitely not transparent, nor black either. I don't know the exact details, so color is a tough question, although I would expect the incident and reflectant waves to be of the same wavelength, thus being essentially white under normal light.

It would be a ball, it would not flow into a beaker, its resistance to deformation would be immense, and it would promptly fall through the floor and plunge into the Earth. It may be a fluid, but it is consolidated by very strong nuclear forces.

Strong neutron-neutron interactions are actually rather weak (there are no neutral nuclei). Gravity is the dominant player here. Fortunately, for balls of neutronium at neutron-star density, this can be rather significant even for thumb-sized pieces. Using this as a heat sink looks to be a rather clever idea, since gravity-dominated systems have negative heat capacities (star formation, for example), avoiding the normal problem of smaller temperature differences. Of course, even if SW-tech can contain the ball, it still ignores neutron decay completely.

[Darth Wong]

Well, at least neutron decay would give it a positive charge, so it's not a neutral any more.

[Kuroneko]

Well, I was concerned about having to counteract both the electrostatic repulsion with gravity and the energy gained in the decay, which would be substantially more difficult, leaving neutrons decaying near the surface of the ball a good chance of escaping. Although the charge distribution won't be perflectly uniform, the ball would still be neutral overall, so that's mostly a pretubation problem. For 0.01m radius at 1e17kg/m³, the escape velocity from the surface is only 75m/s, which is pitiful for the kinds of kinetic energies gained in nuclear reactions (much less than 1eV for a proton). One could make the ball larger, of course, but then it becomes rather incredible that it could be serve the armor role, even with pseudo-magic containment technology.

[omegaLancer]

That's exactly backwards. A collection of non-interacting fermions is by definition a Fermi gas, which is how the neutron stars are modeled. Interacting fermions form Fermi liquids. White dwarves, which are supported by electron degeneracy pressure, are Fermi liquids.

Amazing that your definitive of degenerative matter flies in the face of a known astronomers on the matter, such as Arthur S. Eddington who call Degenerative matter in white dwarves a gas. This is back by Horn's book's "Blackholes, wormholes and Time warps" where he goes in detail on the process of collasp of matter into hyperdense states, and has a wonderful chart on where Degenerative electron gas actually becomes a fluid in the Neutron star.

Basically due to fact the electrons in a white dwarf form a electron gas this is gone into in the following paper in the The American Physical Society journel see http://dx.doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.71.034309

Abstract
Entanglement distance is the maximal separation between two entangled electrons in a degenerate electron gas. Beyond that distance, all entanglement disappears. We relate entanglement distance to degeneracy pressure both for extreme relativistic and nonrelativistic systems, and estimate the entanglement distance in a white dwarf. Treating entanglement as a thermodynamical quantity, we relate the entropy of formation and concurrence to relative electron distance, pressure, and temperature, to form an equation of state for entanglement.

While the neutrons in neutronium interact via Nuclear strong force and a neutron is basically a giant nucleus, in which the forms are said by nuclear physicist to behave as a giant drop of super dense liquid..

The actually structure of neutron stars are a bit more complex than this with the surface layer actually be a cystral of neutron enrich iron, floating on a see of neutron superfluid with a core of super conducting protons..

[Winston Blake]

So if I had a glass of neutronium sitting on my desk right now (ignoring the billion ton mass and other such inconsistencies), what would I be looking at? Would this stuff move if I put a spoon in and moved, it like other dense fluids? How does it interact with other matter without chemical bonding like Van der Waals, and the electron repulsion effects? Would it be effected by normal matter it came into contact with (assuming that theres some way to allow both to exist in the same room at the same time using some hand-wavery) since theres no electron shielding in the neutrons... I'm wondering if it would just pass into other matter if it touched it.

There's no chemical bonding because that requires electron shells, which neutronium doesn't have. It's not made of atoms so there's no molecules, hence no van der Waals or 'electron repulsion effects'. AFAIK (if you ignore the effect of it's gravity and weight on a container) all those neutrons would just 'flow' straight through the container's atoms with little resistance.