Neutron Repulsion Confirmed In The Lab By MIT

[Michael]

The force is strong in neutron stars

Further along the distribution, they observed a transition: There appeared to be more proton-proton and, by symmetry, neutron-neutron pairs, suggesting that, at higher momentum, or increasingly short distances, the strong nuclear force acts not just on protons and neutrons, but also on protons and protons and neutrons and neutrons. This pairing force is understood to be repulsive in nature, meaning that at short distances, neutrons interact by strongly repelling each other.

These findings are also consistent with a number of previous studies that help to explain why neutrons stars can be significantly larger than originally predicted:

The Surprising Reason Why Neutron Stars Don't All Collapse To Form Black Holes

In neutron stars, there should be a similar mass limit: the Tolman-Oppenheimer-Volkoff limit. Initially, it was anticipated that this would be about the same as the Chandrasekhar mass limit, since the underlying physics is the same. Sure, it's not specifically electrons that are providing the quantum degeneracy pressure, but the principle (and the equations) are pretty much the same. But we now know, from our observations, that there are neutron stars much more massive than 1.4 solar masses, perhaps rising as high as 2.3 or 2.5 times the mass of our Sun.

Neutron repulsion has been previously demonstrated by studying the configurations of the nuclei of various atoms:

Neutrons repel each other through the nuclear strong force, as do protons. Nuclei are held together by the formation of nucleon spin pairs and the attraction between neutrons and protons.

This is also confirmed by studying the layered structure of the neutron which seems to consist of various layers with the outside layer holding a slightly negative charge which would also tend to explain why neutrons tend repel one another.

https://www.eetimes.com/scientists-charged-the-neutrons-not-so-neutral-after-all/#

“We have found that a neutron actually carries a negative charge at its inner and outer edges, but has a positive charge in between” said Gerald Miller, a University of Washington (Seattle) physics professor.

Dr. Oliver Manuel, Hilton Ratcliffe and I wrote a number of papers on the topic of neutron repulsion and it's application to objects and events in space which you can find on Arxiv. Its encouraging to see all the new work that's been done on this topic in recent years.

 

[usexpat97]

Hmmm. Could this force be related to electron Cooper pairing? BCS pairing generally accepts that electron pairing in that context is related to the phonon of the lattice in which the electrons exist--but I don't recall that ever being explicitly proven. Maybe there is another, more unifying force at play?

 

[Hans Blaster]

The force is strong in neutron stars

The existence of a repulsive core in the nucleon-nucleon potential is not new. As this article notes, their measurements match closely with the "Argonne V18" model of the nuclear interaction, which dates from 1995.

AV18 Celebration

What is interesting in this analysis (Probing the core of the strong nuclear interaction) is how "close" two neutrons can be and retain their identity as neutrons and not break down into a blob of quarks.

For neutron stars, this has the implication that the centers are now less likely to be made of deconfined quark matter, but rather be made of very compressed neutrons.

I haven't had a chance to read this paper, yet, but I do plan to in the near term.

 

[Hans Blaster]

Hmmm. Could this force be related to electron Cooper pairing? BCS pairing generally accepts that electron pairing in that context is related to the phonon of the lattice in which the electrons exist--but I don't recall that ever being explicitly proven. Maybe there is another, more unifying force at play?

Superfluidity and superconductivity in neutron stars has been know for a while:

https://physicsworld.com/a/neutron-star-has-superfluid-core/

at least according to some measurements. I don't think this is Cooper pairing, but I want to read the article.

 

[usexpat97]

The article says that they form cooper pairs of protons.

 

[Hans Blaster]

The article says that they form cooper pairs of protons.

The Physics World article I linked on superfluidity/conductivity certainly does, but I was referring to the Nature article when I said "I don't think this is Cooper pairing, but I want to read the article." about the new result. Sorry for any confusion.

 

[RealityCheck01]

....Dr. Oliver Manuel, Hilton Ratcliffe and I wrote a number of papers on the topic of neutron repulsion and it's application to objects and events in space which you can find on Arxiv.

Some good science and then a reference to a crackpot. Dr. Oliver Manuel believes that the Sun contains a neutron star! It does not take much knowledge about neutron stars to see that the idea is stupid. Neutron stars have enormous gravity on their surface that causes fusion - the Sun explodes and becomes a slightly fatter neutron star! Neutron stars have magnetic fields that are many magnitudes stringer than the Sun's magnetic field. Neutron stars start at ~ 1 solar mass so the Sun should be much > 1 solar mass and thus not our Sun!
Then things get weirder. The Sun sorts atoms by atomic mass denies the physics and evidence of solar convention. The surface of the Sun is solid/rigid/iron because an image of plasma at ~600,000 K many kilometers above the surface says so. The solar composition is like rocky planets.
Manuel got a couple of papers published in non-astronomy journals with Hilton Ratcliffe and Michael.

The force is strong in neutron stars is real science, not Manual's neutron repulsion = source of energy fantasy.
The Surprising Reason Why Neutron Stars Don't All Collapse To Form Black Holes is a blog about a scientific paper by an astronomer.
"Neutrons repel each other through the nuclear strong force, as do protons..." is a personal web page of the economist Thayer Watkins.
Scientists charged! The neutron’s not so neutral after all is science news from 2007.

 

[FreeinChrist]

ADVISOR HAT

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Edit - did some clean up, but the thread will remain closed. ​