Quark Stars and a New State of Matter?

Rodney,

The evidence for quark stars isn't just confined to the anomalous double explosions of supernovae:

Quark Star Plays Role in New Theory for Brightest Supernovae

[quote]Super-luminous supernovae, which produce more than 100 times more light energy than normal supernovae and occur in about one out of every 1,000 supernovae explosions, have long baffled astrophysicists. The problem has been finding a source for all of that extra energy.

University of Calgary astrophysicists Denis Leahy and Rachid Ouyed think they have a possible source ? the explosive conversion of a neutron star into a quark star.

.........

Leahy and Ouyed's computer models suggest a quark-nova explosion would account for the extra energy observed in super-luminous supernovae. The properties they found in their simulations matched up with those of three of the most luminous supernovae to date: SN2006gy, SN2005gj and SN2005ap.

"In theory, when a neutron star converts into a quark star it releases a lot of energy and it produces something that looks like a supernova explosion in terms of energetics," Leahy said during a presentation of the results today, here at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society (AAS).[end quote]

Akinbo,

I agree with the idea that at the beginning quarks would have become the first stable structures. This therefore implies that strange quarks would have been formed. The you mention "mass" again! How do we know that gravity is equal in all directions from these initial quark structures? We don't. You've just assumed that they all do by using that 'm' word. What is the mechanism of gravity at the beginning? Are you assuming Einstein's spacetime 'fabric'? This idea doesn't fit with the very solid findings of quantum mechanics and therefore should be treated with skepticism imv. I have a common sense mechanism for gravity, which both Newton and Einstein didn't. Why not consider a particle as the force carrier? What shape would a particle need to be to create a force of attraction when it interacts with another in it's path?? Why doesn't the force carrier simply push the secondary particle further away instead of pulling it towards the direction from which it cam from??

Alan

Hi Alan,

I read that interesting article, and I do see now that the researchers are definitely on the right track. The article states, "Other explanations for the bright supernovae are possible, the researchers say". I think these "other explanations" reveal that the scientists are going in the right direction but have failed to go far enough. As the article says, "Quarks are considered to be the tiniest elementary particles that form the building blocks for protons and neutrons, which in turn form atoms." The term "tiniest elementary particles" appears to mean "the ground state or lowest possible energy level". And according to my original comment on this page, "the binary digits of 1 and 0 must surely be the ground state or lowest possible energy level". Admittedly, this explanation probably sounds more unusual than the notion of quark stars. But I believe my previous explanations answer every question more than satisfactorily. In the end, my explanations lead back to black holes instead of quark stars. And black holes, while as unusual as my ideas, are scientifically accepted while the article points out that quark stars are still just theoretical.

Rodney,

We are at loggerheads with differing opinions. You sound at little out of date though with respect to your assertion that 'black holes' are scientifically accepted. Have you heard that Prof. Hawking has just retracted the previously held scientific notion of 'black holes' and the chaos that this has caused?

Stephen Hawking's Blunder on Black Holes Shows Danger of Listening to Scientists, Says Bachmann

[quote] WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)--Dr. Stephen Hawking's recent statement that the black holes he famously described do not actually exist underscores "the danger inherent in listening to scientists," Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minnesota) said today.

Rep. Bachmann unleashed a blistering attack on Dr. Hawking, who earlier referred to his mistake on black holes as his "biggest blunder."

"Actually, Dr. Hawking, our biggest blunder as a society was ever listening to people like you," said Rep. Bachmann. "If black holes don't exist, then other things you scientists have been trying to foist on us probably don't either, like climate change and evolution."

Rep. Bachmann added that all the students who were forced to learn about black holes in college should now sue Dr. Hawking for a full refund. "Fortunately for me, I did not take any science classes in college," she said.

Bachmann's anti-Hawking comments seemed to be gaining traction on Capitol Hill, as seen from the statement by Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), Chairman of the House Science Committee, who said, "Going forward, members of the House Science Committee will do our best to avoid listening to scientists." [end quote]

Akinbo,

Strange quark matter is considered to be a unbounded, unlike baryonic matter, so is more like a fluid. I propose that in the beginning high speeds of rotation created "gravitational magnetism" of strange quark matter but not within baryonic matter. High energy spinning strange quark matter would 'line-up' to give a stronger emission of gravitons on the plane of rotation compared to it's axis of rotation. This higher than average gravitational force then becomes the seed of formation of celestial bodies. This is the familiar shape of a disc with twin jet emission from the spin axis.

How Stellar Death Can Lead To Twin Celestial Jets

[quote]Astronomers know that while large stars can end their lives as violently cataclysmic supernovae, smaller stars end up as planetary nebulae -- colorful, glowing clouds of dust and gas. In recent decades these nebulae, once thought to be mostly spherical, have been observed to often emit powerful, bipolar jets of gas and dust. But how do spherical stars evolve to produce highly aspherical planetary nebulae?[end quote]Attachment #1: 1_exotic-quasar.jpgAttachment #2: rotten-egg-nebula.jpg

Alan,

I think it premature to speculate whether or not gravity is equal in all directions without elucidating its mechanism. Same with the proposed origin of "gravitational magnetism", although I sometimes wonder the source of the earth's magnetic field.

To answer some of the questions you posed would require knowing what space is, that is, whether in some sense, it is 'substantial' or merely 'relational', which is still part of the century old debate between Newton and Leibniz, which in modern times is the debate whether space is discrete or continuous.

Then your question, "Why not consider a particle as the force carrier?" and the subsequent posers suggest that the 'common sense' mechanism to explain attraction with force particles is faulty. Photons like gravitons are also used as force particles.

For example, I just put a light source underneath my wooden table and the light does not pass through because the table top is opaque. But when I put a magnet under the table top, I was able to move a metallic object on top of the table. How did the force particle, in this case a photon pass through? My own line of thinking favors the substantivalist position at the present time based on the cumulative logic and experiments we are aware of. You can google 'substantivalism' after reading about different theories of space here. Follow the arguments and logic but please replace the modern day 'space-time' with 'space' anywhere you see it! You may also take a look at some of the arguments in my 2013 FQXi essay in this regard and the comments with other community members that followed.

Akinbo

Akinbo,

Let me explain to you the common sense mechanism of how gravity works. Let's consider a particle as the force carrier. Object A exerts a force of attraction on Object B. How can a particle emitted from Object A achieve this effect? I propose that the force inducing particle is in the shape of a spinning Archimedes Screw. See attached:

Animation of Archimdes Screw

Imagine that the entire spinning screw is moving to the bottom right of the screen at half the speed of it's rotation. If this particle then interacts with Object B, then a force of attraction is applied, which can be represented by the red balls in the animation. The force carrying particle spins at twice the rate of it's lateral movement. This is the common sense model of the spin-2 boson. Do you see the mechanical simplicity of what I'm trying to convey??

Alan

You're right, Alan. We have differing opinions. When a person has a certain view, it's always possible to find support for that view. For example, I wanted to find out more about Stephen Hawking's recent statements about black holes. So I typed "hawking black holes" into Google, and the first thing my eye saw (even though it was partway down the page) was "Why Hawking Is Wrong About Black Holes" by Brian Koberlein, an astrophysicist and physics professor at Rochester Institute of Technology.

http://www.universetoday.com/108870/why-hawking-is-wrong-about-black-holes/

He says, "What I've presented here is a very rough overview of the situation. I've glossed over some of the more subtle aspects. For a more detailed (and remarkably clear) overview check out Ethan Seigel's post on his blog Starts With a Bang! Also check out the post on Sabine Hossenfelder's blog, Back Reaction, where she talks about the issue herself - ending with "In summary, nothing has changed in our understanding of black holes due to Hawking's paper. ."

You have your definite views ... I have mine. Time will determine who's correct.

I see your explanation. It is simple but it appears unnatural and it is inconsistent. Why do I say inconsistent? Attraction force also exists between opposite electric charges and between unlike magnetic poles. In the particle-as-force carrier proposals, these are said to be 'photons'. Firstly, in what way then will the photon be spinning to cause attraction in some cases and repulsion in other cases? Secondly, across a boundary that is opaque to light, electromagnetic repulsion and attraction can be effected, how did the force carrying particle pass through? Thirdly, according to Newton's third law, the particles must have a momentum, how can they?

You may belong to the 'space as nothing but a relation between things' school, which is why you find such ad hoc mechanisms to explain fundamental forces attractive. Newton, who was more of a substantivalist, could not also proffer any mechanism ('hypothesis non fingo'). But in the substantivalist view, space is to be listed as a content of the universe in its own right and its nature must then have some bearing on the behavior of electric, magnetic and gravitation fields.

So while I can buy your quark proposal, I will not buy the particle as force carrier mechanism even for a penny :)

Akinbo

Rodney,

In your own view of black holes, how do clocks behave near them?

Akinbo,

Not even for a penny? :-) I'm saying that all fundamental particles have the same sort of spinning Archimedes structure. The photon and electron are similarly shaped. I'm assuming that the graviton is the smallest mechanical particle. The photon and electron are bigger.

Repulsion is achieved by a spin direction opposite to it's handedness. A right-handed clockwise spinning particle as well as a left-handed anti-clockwise spinning particle will induce a force of attraction. A right-handed anti-clockwise spinning particle as well as left-handed clockwise spinning particle will both induce a force of repulsion.

I believe space is a vacuum with particles traveling through it. This is a standard scientific view of many I believe.

I have simply put a common sense simulation model of how boson particles 'carry' force.

Alan

Hi Rodney,

Yes, people become entrenched in their views. As you say, time will tell.

Cheers,

Alan

Strange quark matter is also credited with being able to explain another celestial anomaly:

Could Quark Stars Explain Magnetars Strong Magnetic Field?

[quote]Magnetars are the violent, exotic cousins of the well known neutron star. They emit excessive amounts of gamma-rays, X-rays and possess a powerful magnetic field. Neutron stars also have very strong magnetic fields (although weak when compared with magnetars), conserving the magnetic field of the parent star before it exploded as a supernova. However, the huge magnetic field strength predicted from observations of magnetars is a mystery. Where do magnetars get their strong magnetic fields? According to new research, the answer could lie in the even more mysterious quark star...[end quote]

There's more:

Some black holes may actually be 'quark stars'

[quote]Think black holes are strange? Understandable, considering these powerhouses of the universe (many times heavier than our sun) are collapsed stars with gravity so strong that even light cannot escape their grasp.

But maybe they're not "strange" enough, some astrophysicists suggest. "Stellar" black holes, ones only a few times heavier than the sun, may actually be something even weirder called a quark star, or "strange" star.

A physics team led by Zoltan Kovacs of the University of Hong Kong sizes up the issue in the current Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. Quark stars are only theoretical right now, but "the observational identification of quarks stars would represent a major scientific achievement," Kovacs says.

If quark stars exist, it could prove a theory that normal matter - the stuff of people, planets and stars - isn't stable and could help explain the existence of the "dark matter" that fills much of the universe.[end quote]

This plays very well into my own personal hypothesis that *all* celestial bodies have strange quark matter at their cores.

Alan

Rodney,

Robert Koberlein talks about quark stars:

In a Flash

Alan,

The issue of repulsion and attraction is very intimately tied up with whether or not space has a role to play in motion. You also did not say how the clockwise and anti-clockwise spinning particles will cause electromagnetic attraction and repulsion to take place across a barrier opaque to light (i.e. photons).

On "I believe space is a vacuum with particles traveling through it. This is a standard scientific view of many I believe". There are many views out there (with references if you want) that space may be discrete, in which case it MUST have a role to play in motion. Indeed, an FQXi contest was dedicated to whether space/reality was digital or analog. How does motion take place on your computer screen? Given a car on your screen, in moving to your right, the pixels to the right take up the character of the car, while the pixels previously depicting the car revert to the background characteristic. Another way, which I conjecture is the natural one for 'digital motion' is for the pixels to the right of the car to annihilate to nothing simultaneously as pixels emerge from nothing to the left of the car. The car is therefore seen to be displaced to the right, but actually remains in its place! This form of motion resolves the paradoxes of motion for both a discrete and a continuous space. A blog for Quark stars may not be the most appropriate place to elaborate further. You can take a look at various ways of expressing "Digital motion" here, under Examples of patterns, and ask yourself if this may not be what motion actually is in reality.

Akinbo

Akinbo,

Alas, we are at loggerheads over our views on whether an 'ether-like' aspect of space itself exists. I used to believe in something must exist like yourself but have since been convinced of the simplistic particles in empty space ideology.

I'm saying that we have to have a mechanical simulation model of photons, gravitons, force carriers and quarks before we have a complete understanding of how forces work. We're a long way off from that goal. The Standard Model *doesn't* explain 95% of reality. It doesn't model gravity, dark matter or dark energy.

P.S.

I've emailed Ouyed's team asking about the possibility of Quark star rotation creating anisotropic strange quark matter:

...............

Can Centrifugal Force Make Strange Matter Anisotropic?‏

Dear Rachid,

I've been very impressed with your teams successful work on the search for quark stars and have been discussing issues with others on a fundamental physics FQXi forum site here: "Quark Stars and a New State of Matter?" http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/1971

I have a burning question for you though: due to strange quark matter being considered unbounded unlike regular matter, could fast spinning quark stars create a migration of particular types of quark away from the center on the plane of rotation by centrifugal force?

I have good circumstantial evidence to suggest that gravitationally anisotropic strange quark matter exists at the center of the Earth, Moon, planets and stars. The addition of tide raising forces on the plane of rotation between interacting strange quark innermost cores of celestial bodies can explain the 100ky ice age cycle and solve the many problems of Milankovitch insolation only theory. It can also explain the climate millennial cycle with relation to the 1,800 lunar tide cycle.

Congratulations on the continuing excellent work of your team,

Yours sincerely,

Alan Lowey

.....................

Similarly with Rodney, we are both set in our ways and we'll just have to wait to see who's right.

Best wishes,

Alan

Replying to Akinbo Ojo's comment of Feb. 18, 2014 - "Rodney, In your own view of black holes, how do clocks behave near them?" (Answering this will be great mental exercise for me! And I do love exercise!)

Hi Akinbo,

If you could compare the speed of a clock you carried into a black hole with that of a reference clock kept far away, then the clock falling into the black hole would appear to slow down relative to the clock far from the hole (at the event horizon, it would appear to stop). This is how I came to that conclusion (a conclusion shared by a little thing called Relativity).

It's impossible to point to the 4th dimension of time, so this cannot be physical. Since the union of space-time is well established in modern science, we can assume the 4th dimension is actually measurement of the motions of particles (both in the 3 dimensions of length, width, and height and - I believe - in a 5th-dimensional hyperspace where they're called "dark matter"). The Endnotes of my 2014 FQXi essay state that the idea of instability in space of more than 3 dimensions is based on the assumption that gravity is purely attractive. However, Einstein showed that attraction of two bodies of matter actually results from space-time's curvature pushing bodies (is this "repulsive" gravity known as dark energy?).

The basic standard of time in the universe is the measurement of the motions of photons - specifically, of the speed of light. This is comparable to the 1960's adoption on Earth of the measurement of time as the vibration rate of cesium atoms. At Lightspeed, time = 0 (it is stopped). Below 300,000 km/sec, acceleration or gravitation causes time dilation (slowing of time as the speed of light is approached). If time's 0, space is also 0 because space and time coexist as space-time whose warping (gravity) is necessarily 0 too. Spacetime/gravity form matter/mass (addressed shortly in this message), so the latter pair can't exist at lightspeed and photons are massless at that velocity. Gravitons are also massless at Lightspeed since electromagnetism and gravitation are both disturbances in unified space-time.

How can space-time cease to exist at Lightspeed? Total elimination of distance, or space-time, produces nothing in a physical sense and reverts to theoretical physicist Lee Smolin's imagining of strings as "not made of anything at all" (p.35 of Dr. Sten Odenwald's article "What String Theory Tells Us About the Universe": Astronomy - April 2013). It also reverts the universe to the mathematical blueprint from which physical being is constructed (this agrees with cosmologist Max Tegmark's hypothesis that mathematical formulas create reality, http://discovermagazine.com/2008/jul/16-is-the-universe-actually-made-of-math#.UZsHDaIwebs and http://arxiv.org/abs/0704.0646). So, infinity = something (maths), agreeing with Dr. Sten Odenwald's statement on p.32 of his article, that "The basic idea is that every particle of matter ... and every particle that transmits a force ... is actually a small one-dimensional loop of something." (Like infinity, this something would be maths - I believe it's base-2 maths.) The next paragraph may be another way of relating gravitation and acceleration. Just as accelerating to lightspeed means matter/mass ceases to exist, matter stops existing in a black hole. Far from becoming infinitely dense and infinitely massive, the matter is reduced to binary digits.

In the case of the sun, our star would become a black hole if it was compressed to 2.95 kms ("From the Big Bang to Dark Energy" - a lecture on coursera.org by Hitoshi Murayama from the University of Tokyo), in which case the pressure increase "shreds" the sun into its binary digits. In other words, its mass is relativistically converted into the energy of binary digits i.e. the bosons stop interacting in wave packets to produce the forces we identify as mass, and the bosons - which are ultimately composed of the binary digits depicting pi, e, в€љ2 etc. (see "Digital String Theory") - register as 1's and 0's.

Back to black holes - there's no such thing as a quark-electron mixture forming Quark Stars. But there is a mixture of 1's and 0's forming matter, energy, forces, and all space-time. The formation of binary digits that most resembles stars, or masses of perhaps billions of stars, would be that part of space-time called Black Holes. Black holes aren't composed of matter but do have mass because they are meeting-places and "sinks" for the gravitational currents flowing in and between galaxies.** They possess charge because the universe's mathematical foundation unites gravity/spacetime with electricity/magnetism (see the paragraph about Digital String Theory in my essay). Since it has mass, a black hole can naturally possess the 3rd property of holes viz. spin.

Einstein's work famously showed that time is relative. In 1907 his General Theory of Relativity showed that clocks run more quickly at higher altitudes because they experience a weaker gravitational force than clocks on the surface of the Earth. Going into more detail, my own thoughts are -

Suppose Albert Einstein was correct when he said gravitation plays a role in the constitution of elementary particles (in "Do Gravitational Fields Play An Essential Part In The Structure of the Elementary Particles?" - a 1919 submission to the Prussian Academy of Sciences). And suppose he was also correct when he said gravitation is the warping of space-time. Then it is logical that 1) gravitation would play a role in constitution of elementary particles, and their mass, and also in the constitution of the forces associated with those particles, and 2) the warping of space-time that produces gravity means space-time itself plays a role in the constitution of elementary particles, their mass, and the forces. Matter can be thought of as "coherent space" that is bound by forces. There's a stronger gravitational force on the surface of the Earth because gravity is concentrated in the matter there (see WHY IS GRAVITY WEAK? in my essay). So, like a black hole, time is slowed down at lower altitudes (but far less, of course).

What would I do without Einstein's theories to support all my wild ideas?

Rodney,

Let me brief in my response since this blog is on Quark stars.

RE: If you could compare the speed of a clock you carried into a black hole with that of a reference clock kept far away, then the clock falling into the black hole would appear to slow down relative to the clock far from the hole (at the event horizon, it would appear to stop).

In other words, any process takes an infinite amount of time to complete. Now compare this with "Seth Lloyd led off the longer talks... and gave the sage advice that if you should find yourself falling into a black hole, whatever you do, don't struggle".Refer here and here. We all know that Struggling is a process, can it be completed in a black hole? If it can, then can the duration taken to complete struggling not be used to measure a finite time?

Then hear Zeeya Merali's sweet voice here contradicting the theory that clocks virtually come to a stop. If you fell in a black hole, how long will it take you to be spaghettified, ripped apart, crushed and frazzled to a crisp? These are processes that will take eternity according to Einstein's common sense but those who think they know more than the founder of General relativity speak from both sides of the mouth on this topic. Hawking is to be praised for now partially retracing his steps.

Finally, as I have posted on a blog elsewhere, RE: Einstein's work famously showed that time is relative... that clocks run more quickly at higher altitudes because they experience a weaker gravitational force than clocks on the surface of the Earth. When you want to dtermine the time taken for light to travel a given distance, which clock will you use?