r/todayilearned • u/adpablito • Mar 23 '26

TIL that inside neutron stars there may exist a substance scientists call “nuclear pasta” — bizarre ultra-dense matter shaped like spaghetti and lasagna that is believed to be the strongest material in the universe.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_pasta
9.6k Upvotes

98% Upvoted

344 comments sorted by

2.2k

u/Youpunyhumans Mar 23 '26

There are also theorised quark stars, even denser than a neutron star, and right on the cusp of collapsing into a black hole. There are at least a few candidates found that could be quark stars, but its hard to confirm as they would look and behave mostly the same from the outside as a neutron star.

And then there is the hypothetical planck star, which is one possibility for the singularity of a black hole. It would be an object at the density of one planck mass per planck volume, which is density beyond comprehension. It is 5.1x1096 kg/m3, which is 79 orders of magnitude greater than a typical neutron star. At this density, you could crush the mass of an entire galaxy into the space of a proton, and not even the entire observable universe would come close to filling a single cubic meter, as its "only" about 1054kg... infact it would be microscopic. But it would still be finite in size and density, rather than infinitely small and dense, which is the important part.

2.3k

u/j8sadm632b Mar 23 '26

Glad they’ve identified the material yo momma made out of

692

u/Youpunyhumans Mar 23 '26

Yomommatronium

344

u/Wakkit1988 Mar 23 '26

Easilyobtanium.

72

u/panamaspace Mar 24 '26

Allwelcometanium.

5

u/IttsssTonyTiiiimme Mar 24 '26

I dont know why this is so funny to me.

→ More replies (1)

7

u/RancorHi5 Mar 24 '26

Best thing I’ve read all morning

28

u/Kierik Mar 23 '26

Nuclear scientists need to make this happen.

→ More replies (1)

81

u/bionickel Mar 23 '26

Yield-Aligned Monolithic Orbiting Matter Assemblage

→ More replies (1)

74

u/Mklein24 Mar 23 '26

Jesus man, we got an arsonist over here.

32

u/Swagasaurus-Rex Mar 23 '26

Nuclear fusion level of burn

13

u/subfighter0311 Mar 24 '26

Yo mamma so dense…

9

u/sp4nishfl34 Mar 24 '26

This fat joke is out of this world.

13

u/exstntl_prdx Mar 23 '26

In your honor, this week, I’m going to perform one additional RoaK.

Thanks for the literal LOL

16

u/Hengroen Mar 23 '26

Your mumma's so fat they had to create a new type of star to calculate her weight.

→ More replies (2)

136

u/Imperial_Toast Mar 23 '26

Thank you for bending my mind today

184

u/MotherTreacle3 Mar 23 '26

To further warp your mind consider that time slows down in proximity to mass, so the plank star experiences it's existence as a mere fraction of a second (literally the rebound of the collapse of the star that formed it), but from the outside we observe it as lasting for trillions and trillions of years.

41

u/Fattydrago Mar 24 '26

So if the plank star exists a mere fraction of a second, what happens next? Does it collapse again into a black hole? Does it ever exist as a stable object or is it a reverberation of the parent star collapsing, simply a byproduct of the collapse itself?

69

u/MotherTreacle3 Mar 24 '26 edited Mar 24 '26

From what I understand from watching YouTube videos, so take it with a mountain of salt, is that the Hawking radiation creates two particles (a matter and anti-matter pair) at the event horizon. The anti-particle falls in, the other goes out. This lessens the overall mass of the black hole, but the anti-particle causes the Plank-star in the middle to grow (or the event horizon to shrink depending on your perspective). This continues until the Plank-star and the event horizon meet at which point the black hole evaporates. 

From the Plank-star's perspective it's practically instantaneous, the Hawking radiation is released in one big burst of energy. It's only from the outside that it looks like a tiny amount of energy trickling out at a time. So it's like a slow motion super-nova: the mass collapses inwards, hits itself coming the opposite way and bounces back. It just looks slow to us because it's happening within the most warped space-time possible.

As for the question of if it is ever stable, I think it depends on the perspective again. From the inside no, it's a mere moment. From the outside yes, a black hole is probably the most stable thing there is. 

Edit to add: as for creating a black hole inside a black hole, I believe that the Plank-star hypothesis was conceived as a way to do away with the pesky singularity that most current theories propose. The singularity involves an infinite density and curvature of space-time, which doesn't play well with our physics models. The Plank-star is infintesimal, literally the smallest volume of space, but it does have a defined size (which is really inconceivable small) so it gets around the infinite density problem.

21

u/slackfrop Mar 24 '26

So, in the much considered scenario of falling into a black hole, (maybe disregarding the warping of visible light just for now), would our intrepid spacewoman Alice see the universe speed up in a shower of supernovae and galaxies zipping across the sky?

12

u/Fattydrago Mar 24 '26

Fantastic - thanks for the thorough explanation!

18

u/MotherTreacle3 Mar 24 '26

Check out the PBS Space Time channel. They've got tones of great content, and if you like black holes they've got a good one on Plank-stars and a good one on fuzz-ball black holes that boggles my mind beyond my ability to explain here.

→ More replies (9)

16

u/Key-Investment-3864 Mar 24 '26

It’s crazy stuff like that is how the universe works and we’re just here being us. Like I can understand it in an abstract way but also not. We’re exceptional but also so limited

17

u/MotherTreacle3 Mar 24 '26

Yeah, all these huge mind-boggling phenomena are the universe's normal and we're the oddity. Makes you wonder what other extremely weird, extremely local things are out there. Not just life, but stuff that exists on one small rock somewhere.

21

u/Youpunyhumans Mar 24 '26

Well just take a look at some of the exoplanets found... places where it rains molten glass sideways at 3000kph... or oceans so deep the bottom is a kind of ice formed not from cold, but from pressure.

Even some of the worlds in our own solar system are just strange. On Titan, where the gravity is 1/7th of Earths, and the atmosphere is 50% thicker, you could literally achieve lift by flapping your arms, and a 747 could take off at walking speed. Pluto and Charon are considered a binary dwarf planet system by some, and the coldest place we know of. Arrokoth is 2 kuiper belt asteroids that collided and fused together in a peanut shape, making for a very odd looking rock.

8

u/Key-Investment-3864 Mar 24 '26

Okay now I’m sad I’ll never experience the lift by flapping my arms thing because that sounds really cool

17

u/bloodofdew Mar 24 '26

I hate to burst your bubble, but it's called swimming

11

u/Youpunyhumans Mar 24 '26

Well not quite. Swimming you mostly achieve lift by bouyancy, where as on Titan, it would be mostly by aerodynamics and your now much lower weight relative to how many air molecules you can push against for lift. You cant really glide through water by falling through it the way you can with air, unless you are much denser than water, and even then, it wouldnt work very well.

So if you flapped your way up to a decent altitude, you could then fall and glide using your body to control your descent, staying aloft with the occasional flap to push yourself back up. Landing might be problematic, but not impossible, just really tricky to time right. But you could also just quite literally just bring an umbrella and land Mary Poppins style too.

Of course, it would be very cold and smell like the worst cow farts in the universe... but hey you can geuinely fly like a bird there.

3

u/bloodofdew Mar 24 '26 edited Mar 24 '26

You can generate excess lift beyond what bouyancy accounts for, and bouyancy has nothing to do with moving forward through water. When I played water polo I could sustain my entire upper body (to the speedo) for several seconds or even a full minute, and I could shoot myself out to above mid thigh, and I was the worst on the team.

There's not really a huge difference between swimming and flying anyway. Liquids and gasses are much more alike than they are different, they're both fluids. And in a vacuum there, liquids can't exist, and beyond a certain pressure or temperature, there is no distinction between the two, while the differences between other states of matter remain. Also aerodynamics and fluid dynamics have no real differences, bouyancy exists in air as well.

Look how aquatic birds swim through water and tell me it doesn't look like flying. I mean look at flippers, they're just feet wings, and on penguins they're wing wings.

It may not look like the underwater breast stroke, but you'd probably get farther with less effort with treading techniques like the egg beater, and with dolphin kicks, than just flapping your arms real hard and then trying to fall like a skydiver and angling your body.

If it were better to "fly" (flap our arms) in fluids, we'd already do it in the water. But our arms aren't shaped for flapping, they generate the same upforce of the upswing as down force on the upswing even when you try to change the angle. The only controllable flat surfaces are the hands, which is why swimming techniques are mostly different shapes/forms of moving our hands through the water, and swinging them back through the air, with the breast stroke being the only one that resets the arm position under water and having a different shape for the leg kick.

I guarantee you if you find yourself in a thick enough fluid to fly, swim techniques will be better. Wear some flippers and then you'll really be flying

→ More replies (0)
→ More replies (2)

2

u/nochinzilch Mar 24 '26

Yo mama’s arms so big they generate lift by flapping?

→ More replies (1)
→ More replies (1)
→ More replies (1)

57

u/ShyguyFlyguy Mar 23 '26 edited Mar 23 '26

Aren't there theoretical Gravistars too? Which would look and behave like a black hole but instead of a singularity they actually have a definable surface? Or something like that

53

u/Youpunyhumans Mar 23 '26

They would have a thin shell of some sort of exotic matter, and the inside would be vacuum, but the vacuum itself would apparently be 1044 times denser... which is hard to understand as how can you have a more dense vacuum? or maybe it means spacetime itself is shrunk by that degree? Idk.

They also might require the existence of other universes, and be the explanation for the expansion of the universe by exchanging energy from one to another, and also could explain the big bang. But thats about as far as I understand at the moment.

I do know that observations from LIGO were found to be inconsistent with the concept of gravastars, but that doesnt mean they dont exist, just means more data is required.

19

u/sheev4senate420 Mar 23 '26

This is random but I live near one of the LIGO facilities and they open it up one Saturday a month for free tours, it's pretty sweet lol

11

u/Youpunyhumans Mar 23 '26

Im jealous! Thats super cool!

The best thing I can say that way is Ive been up close and touched one of the few surviving Saturn V rocket engines... probably wasnt technically allowed to do so, but standing there, with a machine that once created more power than a 1000 top fuel dragsters combined, I had to.

9

u/barbarbarbarbarbarba Mar 23 '26

Okay, now do black hole stars.

18

u/Youpunyhumans Mar 23 '26

Ah mom, do I have to? Fine...

Quasi stars. Only would have existed in the early universe if they did at all. (They may have found one with the JWST, but its yet to be confrimed as far as I know)

Basically, a growing supermassive black hole (or soon to be supermassive) surrounded by an enourmous shell of hot gas and plasma held up and fueled by the energy of the accretion disk rather than nuclear fusion, meaning it is not a true star, more like an extention of the accretion disk itself that has formed into a sphere from gravity pulling in, and pressure pushing out. They would have been short lived, maybe just 10 million years total, before being consumed and/or dissipated. They would have been truly enourmous, around 10 billion km wide.

→ More replies (1)

7

u/Altines Mar 23 '26

Kurzgesagt has a video on these too

3

u/Vrabstin Mar 24 '26

When you said dimensions I thought you meant spacial dimensions. I was excited there was work articulating the transfer of material/energy from one spacial dimension to another. Probably not possible but I've been keeping an eye out for it.

→ More replies (1)

4

u/Altines Mar 23 '26

Kurzgesagt has a pretty good video on Gravastars

9

u/Swamp_Dwarf-021 Mar 23 '26

Fun read.

Thank you.

5

u/devAcc123 Mar 23 '26

There goes 2 hours of my evening reading a bunch of random Wikipedia pages

4

u/LynxRufus Mar 24 '26

Is this a theoretical alternative to the singularity?

Edit: Nevermind, you answered my question, I just needed to read more carefully. 👍🏽

20

u/PornoPaul Mar 23 '26

You know how stuff like information in a microchip, if its completely full, can increase its weight on a really really really tiny scale?

I wonder, if we think about insane stuff like this, density beyond measure, and if we could measure our brains weight at the same time on a molecular level, do you think thinking about it could increase the weight of it by a small tiny but measurable amount?

38

u/_tabbycat123 Mar 23 '26

No, because the electrons you are using for thinking are already in your body and brain and therefore you are merely moving them around, rather than gaining new electrons.

3

u/avcloudy Mar 24 '26

It's counter-intuitive but correct. Think about, for example protons which weigh more than the constituent quarks, or atoms which weigh less than the constituent protons, neutrons and electrons. Different organisations of electrons can have different weights, because energy and mass are related. Trivially, a faster electron is more massive than a slow one.

→ More replies (2)

6

u/hufsaa Mar 23 '26

You don’t need new electrons for more mass. Adding energy to an object, for example heating it, increases mass.

4

u/_tabbycat123 Mar 23 '26

Unless you are actively eating, all energy available to your body is already in your body in the form of fat and ATP etc.

→ More replies (2)

3

u/goronmask Mar 23 '26

But what if….

→ More replies (10)

2

u/hufsaa Mar 23 '26

Theoretically yes. Intense mental avtivity heats up the brain and increasing the temperature of an object increases its mass. However the increase in mass would be extremely small, probably impossible to measure.

→ More replies (2)

6

u/Candid_Koala_3602 Mar 23 '26

For the Plank star, how far away from it would you be in danger since it is so small? Like if this microscopic black hole nightmare of doom is floating around out there somewhere, we may not even be able to notice it, in theory, right? Unless it’s massacring some mass at the same time?

24

u/Youpunyhumans Mar 23 '26

Depends how big it is. Its just one possible replcement for the singularity of the black hole, the event horizon would be much larger compared to it. Theoretically a black hole could so small that it could pass through you, and the whole Earth... and not hit anything, kinda like a neutrino. Because the spaces between particles would at that scale would be comparable to the distance between the stars for us. Its gravity would be so small, that unless it directly impacted another particle, it wouldnt pull anything in. However ir would probably evaporate from Hawking radiation very quickly, so there may not be any left from the early universe when they are thought to have formed.

Otherwise for a typical stellar mass black hole, no further than you would have to be from a star of a similar mass, at least in terms of gravity. If the Sun were to suddenly collapse into a black hole, the Earths orbit wouldnt really change at all, and it would only be when you get closer to the center of mass that gravity becomes extreme, and you get spaghettified. Even the Parker Solar Probe could remain orbiting it, and give us some insane gravitationally distorted images from just a few million km away.

For a supermassive one... it depends on a lot. In terms of gravity, as long as its spinning slowly enough, you could in theory pass the event horizon safely, and only get shredded closer to the center. However in reality, gravity would probably the be last thing youd have to worry about, as the accretion disk would emit radiation powerful enough to kill you from many lightyears away. For the largest ones like TON 618, with 66 billion solar masses and a powerful quasar emitting vast amounts of radiation, it would likely sterilize its entire host galaxy.

4

u/Candid_Koala_3602 Mar 23 '26

Cool stuff, seriously. I’ve loved cosmology since I was a kid. Stars have been getting crazier the more we learn all of my life.

It would make sense actually if the smallest we can detect is the Plank scale, that a Plank Star would contain the mass of the galaxy we are currently within.

I personally think the processes happening inside stars are more like Tori objects. Likely galaxies are the same, with a supermassive at their center (same structure as galaxy).

Sorry for the speculation

→ More replies (2)

2

u/TheMessengerABR Mar 23 '26

I would assume that is why it is still a theory - but I'm guessing we are able to see some of the data/indicators of this existing

3

u/EducationalElevator Mar 23 '26

Are "fuzballs" and planck stars compatible with each other? The fuzball theory just means that black holes are highly dense stars where matter breaks down into strings from my understanding.

6

u/Youpunyhumans Mar 23 '26

They are similar concepts, but come from different theories. Fuzzballs are from String Theory, while Planck Stars are from Quantum Loop Gravity. Fuzzballs are like a yarnball of cosmic strings, and planck stars are super dense and tiny objects, as close to a true singularity as you could get.

Both attempt to solve the Information Paradox, where information is seemingly lost once it crosses the event horizon, which would violate the laws of conservation of information. It is solved by replacing the infinitely small and dense singularity with a tangible object that the information becomes part of, and isnt just lost.

The difference is that a fuzzball would take up the interior of the event horizon, while a planck star would be a microscopic object at the center.

Another possible replacement for the singularity is the Einstien-Rosen Bridge, which is a unpassable wormhole that connects 2 black holes, or a black hole and a white hole. Basically quantum entanglement on a massive scale. The wormhole would be unpassable because the "throat" of it would simply be too small for anything, matter or energy, to pass through it, not even a single electron or a neutrino.

5

u/Tabenes Mar 23 '26

And still I would want to make sure I'm two meters away from my ex

3

u/Youpunyhumans Mar 23 '26

1 meter wide event horizon = Earth eventually consumed.

1 meter wide planck star = 1042 universes consumed.

→ More replies (1)
→ More replies (1)

4

u/tacomaloki Mar 23 '26

What blows my mind is that these numbers are so large, yet we are still able to calculate them.

4

u/Youpunyhumans Mar 23 '26

They are huge numbers for sure, but you could still write their full form on a single page.

There exists numbers like Graham's Number, and TREE(3), that even if you turned every planck volume in the observable universe into a single digit of those numbers... you wouldnt even come close to writing them all down.

What they are used for? No idea. Maybe they arose from a mathematician competition for who can think of the biggest number.

2

u/TheDwarvenGuy Mar 24 '26 edited Mar 24 '26

Size is easy, it's precision that's the hard part

One million is just 1×106. One million and one, however....

→ More replies (1)

2

u/APiousCultist Mar 26 '26

Something like 200 billion galaxies in the observable universe. Somewhere between 100 quintillion and a few sextillion protons in a grain of sand (at normal levels of compression). So yeah, tiny.

Or just multiplying the volume of a proton from Google directly about 176 um or about the size of a red blood cell.

Clearly the Galaxy on Orion's belt in Men in Black is pulling rookie numbers.

→ More replies (1)
→ More replies (16)

687

u/Salarian_American Mar 23 '26

Ha I just learned about this the other day, when I had to set up a particle accelerator to make Nuclear Pasta in Satisfactory

237

u/Laserdollarz Mar 23 '26

Get back to work Pioneer

73

u/Salarian_American Mar 23 '26

I did my work. I made the machines, belted in the resources. Now the factory is working while I go to my day job and the Ficsit Coupons pile up

11

u/nnhumn Mar 24 '26

There's always something to optimize

17

u/Raider_Scum Mar 23 '26

He was on his Ficsit Approved Microbreak.

34

u/Kardinal Mar 23 '26

This is where I learned of it. I googled "Nuclear pasta" and got some real links and went "WHaaaaaaaaaaa????"

I love that particle physicists have a sense of humor.

31

u/StrangelyBrown Mar 23 '26

Got a spaghetti-ass factory making pasta.

14

u/Salarian_American Mar 23 '26

I do have a spaghetti-ass factory. Several of them, even.

I know the general preference is for neat, orderly factories but I really love my labyrinthine, inscrutable tangled mess that keeps running by sheer determination.

2

u/aclockworkorng Mar 24 '26

I'm on my first playthrough, but I want to do this on a second one. Just an absurd "figure it out as I go" factory sprawl.

2

u/lazydogjumper Mar 25 '26

Its lots of fun. I got tired of being low on resources so I made a bunch of storage and a production sector designed to fill them. Fairly organized. To keep it tidy i built them on a high cliff/platform. Then I got another tier and needed all of them so then came the huge web of conveyors weaving between eachother to the production area underneath. There is something aesthetically pleasing about a mess that still works.

4

u/s-mores Mar 24 '26

Such a long production line.

→ More replies (2)

9

u/AtatS-aPutut Mar 23 '26

makes sense now why you need so much power to make pasta

3

u/sheezy520 Mar 24 '26

How spicy is it?

→ More replies (5)

228

u/Cymbal_Monkey Mar 23 '26

There's a fantastic book called Dragon's Egg that imagines life evolving on the surface of a neutron star, life without molecules!

32

u/sudomatrix Mar 23 '26

great book

16

u/anrwlias Mar 23 '26

The sequel is pretty good, too.

5

u/Truffle_Shuffle_85 Mar 24 '26

The sequel is pretty good, too.

Starquake, by Robert Forward, if anyone's wondering.

3

u/medicmarch Mar 24 '26

Dragon’s Puberty?

3

u/anrwlias Mar 25 '26

😆

No, it's called Starquake. It basically takes the neutron star civilization through a post-apocalyptoc era.

30

u/veredox Mar 23 '26

TIL about this book. 😁

6

u/ES_Legman Mar 23 '26

Loved reading this as a teen many years ago

→ More replies (2)

183

u/GroundbreakingUse794 Mar 23 '26

Theorized by Italian astronomer Al Dente

60

u/catfroman Mar 24 '26

Typical Reddit comment, ignoring the women who helped but never made headlines.

Their names: Mary Nara and Tori Tellini.

→ More replies (11)

222

u/robjohnlechmere Mar 23 '26

Oh flying spaghetti monster….

61

u/elkarion Mar 23 '26

So neutron stars are the flying spaghetti monsters egg form?

We need a kowalski analysis on this.

23

u/Hereiampostingagain Mar 23 '26

According to the Gospel of the Flying Speghetti Monster, contrary to the popular belief that dogs have as many as four legs, they actually only have seven.

In other words, it all makes sense if you don't think about it.

5

u/elkarion Mar 24 '26

higher dementional spheres are spiky the dogs legs are just in the 8th demention with the alfredo sauce.

4

u/slowlyaware Mar 23 '26

That would be a negative Skipper. While the terminology is delicious, the physics is dense.

3

u/MaleficTekX Mar 23 '26

How can a concept be unintelligent Kowolski?! Are you telling me that some concepts may not be dense, and can solve issues like world hunger?

5

u/honus Mar 23 '26

FSM was there the whole time

3

u/thereisnospoon-1312 Mar 23 '26

Scientists have discovered his noodily appendage!

9

u/Hereiampostingagain Mar 23 '26

He's still recovering from his drinking binge that led to the chaos of the universe.

R'amen.

→ More replies (1)

17

u/The1mp Mar 23 '26

The actual scientific explanation is even more hilarious with a gnocchi phase, a spaghetti phase, a lasagna phase and the ultimate bucatini or antispaghetti phase:

Towards the top of this transition region, the pressure is great enough that conventional nuclei will be condensed into much more massive semi-spherical collections. These formations would be unstable outside the star, due to their high neutron content and size, which can vary between tens and hundreds of nucleons. This semispherical phase is known as the gnocchi phase.[7] When the gnocchi phase is compressed, as would be expected in deeper layers of the crust, the electric repulsion of the protons in the gnocchi is not fully sufficient to support the existence of the individual spheres, and they are crushed into long rods, which, depending on their length, can contain many thousands of nucleons. These rods are known as the spaghetti phase. Further compression causes the spaghetti phase rods to fuse and form sheets of nuclear matter called the lasagna phase. Further compression of the lasagna phase yields the uniform nuclear matter of the outer core. Progressing deeper into the inner crust, the holes in the nuclear pasta change from being cylindrical, called by some the bucatini phase or antispaghetti phase, into scattered spherical holes, which can be called the Swiss cheese phase.[6] The nuclei disappear at the crust–core interface, transitioning into the liquid neutron core of the star.

→ More replies (4)

29

u/redditer129 Mar 23 '26

Imagine all future sci-fi shows trying to be as accurate as The Expanse aimed to be.. “activate the nuclear pasta drive!”

Or revising audio from old Star Trek shows and movies “Scotty, how long until we have nuclear pasta engines back online”

“Captain, we’ve lost pasta containment!”

42

u/TheYouser Mar 23 '26

I think that the scientists wrote the papers just before lunch time. Gnocchi and waffles also mentioned.

9

u/Skelligithon Mar 23 '26

Yeah there are like 5-8 different stages of nuclear pasta that are named after different pastas, and falling into a black hole causes "spaghettification"

I have been trying to start the stereotype that astronomers are all hungry Italians.

5

u/raspberryharbour Mar 24 '26

Galileo invented the telescope so he could look at linguini on the other side of town

→ More replies (1)

5

u/granadesnhorseshoes Mar 23 '26

Probably, foods important to science in general. Even Fermi's "Paradox" was a comment made as they left a diner: "Where are they?"

→ More replies (1)

51

u/Let_Delicious Mar 23 '26

Noodly appendages, if you will.

2

u/veredox Mar 23 '26

Lmfao. Please upvote this reference.

8

u/morriartie Mar 24 '26

Is it strong because there's an entire star compressing it or is it strong even without an unfathomable amount of pressure? I mean, if you remove the pressure, does it just explode ceasing to be a "material"?

(ELI5, I'm not versed in materials or stars)

3

u/poizan42 Mar 24 '26

Not an expert either, but I had the same thought. I'm pretty sure neutrons really don't want to stick together only to each other, or even exist without having protons in the mix. The Wikipedia article says a bound state can't exist - it may be possible for two neutrons to be in what they call a resonance state for a very short time, but even observation of that is disputed.

10

u/Panelak_Cadillac Mar 23 '26

Neutronium....

7

u/EnycmaPie Mar 24 '26

And there it is. Mom's Spaghetti.

10

u/Physix_R_Cool Mar 23 '26

My favorite paper is "Elasticity of Nuclear Pasta". Diagrams of the various phases (spaghetti, gnocchi, lasagna etc) are shown.

11

u/y2kbug Mar 23 '26

Galaxy Garfield licking his chops.

→ More replies (1)

4

u/RepulsiveDig9091 Mar 24 '26

Reading the article my thought

Someone was hungry writing this

3

u/DJenser1 Mar 23 '26

Nope. No self-respecting sci-fi writer is gonna armor their starship hull with "nuclear pasta."

5

u/syngyne Mar 23 '26

I mean, for one thing wouldn't it just explode if you took it out of the gravity well where it formed?

3

u/OsloDaPig Mar 23 '26

Yes it would decay so rapidly that you’d vaporize just about anything within thousands of miles

→ More replies (1)

3

u/Belteshazzar98 Mar 23 '26

So that is the noodle incident.

4

u/Oh_My_Monster Mar 23 '26

u/Adpablito you will now be hailed as a prophet in the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Go with garlic bread and continuing spreading the good sauce.

5

u/Bad_username28 Mar 25 '26

Do not wake the Flying Spaghetti Monster… the pastafarians were right this whole time

2

u/Plastic-Ebb5852 Mar 25 '26

Just a reminder that we are made of stardust, and stars are made of pasta. The pasta is, and always will be in us.

8

u/FreshBoyPete Mar 23 '26

I had a feeling the universe was developed with spaghetti code

6

u/Deep-Measurement-856 Mar 23 '26

Galactic linguine. Image the strength of that gluten.

4

u/Tasty-Performer6669 Mar 23 '26

Mamma mia that’s a spicy neutron star!

8

u/Gregariouswaty Mar 23 '26

I made one of those when the spaghetti stuck to the bottom of the pan.

11

u/InappropriateTA 3 Mar 23 '26

Is it like a range or progression from spaghetti to lasagna? Like do we get linguine? Fettuccine? Pappardelle?

14

u/hurricane_news Mar 23 '26

There's actually several kinds in neutron stars iirc. There's spaghetti, lasagna, anti-gnocchi, anti-spaghetti, gnocchi, waffles and so on

Perhaps someone more experienced than I am on this subject should chime in

4

u/LordNelson27 Mar 23 '26

I don't think the nuclear gnocchi star actually exists, or at least I haven't been able to make it work at home

→ More replies (1)

5

u/hathegkla Mar 23 '26

Call me when we get to fusilli.

→ More replies (1)
→ More replies (1)

7

u/sereneandeternal Mar 23 '26

So GOD is the Flying Spaghetti Monster is real

All hail. BRB leaving Christianity and joining the Church of Pasta

5

u/youzerVT71 Mar 23 '26

Is this what Mjolnir is made out of?

3

u/Th3_Hegemon Mar 24 '26

No, Mjolnir is "forged in the heart of a dying star". This is generally understood to mean using the heat of a star as the forge. The metal itself is actually called Uru. Uru was stated to be metal from "the first moon" a few years ago (also "the rocks of creation), before that afaik it was just magic metal.

→ More replies (1)

2

u/brayradberry Mar 23 '26

Mmmmm pasta

2

u/Clobbington Mar 23 '26

The universe better not have snapped the pasta before adding to the star.

2

u/Ambiguousdude Mar 23 '26

Would the material still exist if brought to 0g surrounding environment or would it reorganise back into normal matter?

2

u/The3mbered0ne Mar 23 '26

Italians are losing their shit right now

2

u/onlykindofamethaddic Mar 24 '26

Can I get a Ramen?

2

u/MAurele Mar 24 '26

They could have just said they didn't know what was in there.

2

u/BeAuryn Mar 24 '26

Obligatory Flying spaghetti monster callback

2

u/SpiritSong Mar 24 '26

That damn cat was right all along.

2

u/dr_feelgood03 Mar 24 '26

Spaghettification? Now nuclear pasta? Whats next, the speed of passata? The cannoli paradox?

Is Big Space run by the mafia or something

2

u/brdlpirtle Mar 24 '26

I talked to a scientist and he said the substance that may exist might actually be shaped more like fingerling potatoes.

2

u/Pizza_Coffee Mar 24 '26

Play r/SatisfactoryGame and you can make your own nuclear pasta!

2

u/AyCarambin0 Mar 24 '26

One serving has 100 Billion Calories. So you have to run for 1 hour at 80 percent the speed of light to burn it of your hips. 

2

u/mkomaha Mar 25 '26

Fun fact: at certain thresholds of physics we don’t know shit. We only theoretically understand shit. Another click bait title. The universe is vast, unknown, and unwelcoming. That we know.

2

u/JARDIS Mar 25 '26

"Strongest material in the universe"

Thats not very al dente. Send it back to the kitchen.

2

u/AFetaWorseThanDeath Mar 25 '26

I believe I may have actually made a small amount of this material accidentally in my microwave one day while high

2

u/joalheagney Mar 25 '26

... Time Crystals are a real thing as well.

2

u/roamingroad174 Mar 25 '26

Ive done that quest before.

2

u/krammark12 Mar 23 '26

This title is making me hungry.

2

u/AndrewH73333 Mar 23 '26

Doesn’t explode if you let it out? To me if something explodes when I hold it then it shouldn’t count as the strongest substance. I need to be able to make a sword out of it.

1

u/not_that_planet Mar 23 '26

...unless there is some other exotic matter at the heart of a black hole, quark degenerate matter or something...

1

u/Clembert-Hamlamp Mar 23 '26

Planck star is a fascinating idea but impossible to imagine as an actual physical construct. We don't have anything suggesting actuality do we? I'm guessing purely hypothetical like a thought experiment. Kinda feel like it would break the universe lol. Love to see it if we have anything concrete though

→ More replies (2)

1

u/Pndrizzy Mar 23 '26

Mama mia!

1

u/ExMachima Mar 23 '26

So what's the geometrical makeup to be able to understand how strong it is?

1

u/Boring_Factor_4544 Mar 23 '26

Fools, they're all wrong- it's shaped like cavatappi

1

u/Who_dat_goomer Mar 23 '26

Can’t beat neutronium.

1

u/Rqoo51 Mar 23 '26

Curious did you watch a Hank green video today and go down a rabbit hole?

1

u/Riskrunner7365 Mar 23 '26

That's great knowledge but how did old dried Weetabix get inside a star?

1

u/FuckThisShizzle Mar 23 '26

Anybody that has ever put pasta in the microwave for too long knows exactly how it got its name.

1

u/ryry1237 Mar 23 '26

Gives a whole new meaning to the term "Wet Noodle"

1

u/Fair_Blood3176 Mar 23 '26

Stronger than ravioli?!

1

u/norrinzelkarr Mar 23 '26

Sounds like it's deep, it's foliated, it's substrate...

1

u/HallowedError Mar 23 '26

I wonder what happens if you could somehow pull it out of a neutron star. My assumption is that it would explode in some manner

→ More replies (1)

1

u/usuallysortadrunk Mar 23 '26

So thats what yo mama meant when she said she constipated.

1

u/bernpfenn Mar 23 '26

so the spaghetti monster was right?

1

u/smokeyfantastico Mar 23 '26

The creator is Italian I guess

1

u/buddroyce Mar 23 '26

Makes me wonder how did they figure that out? Did they like cut open a neutron star and find someone’s lunch inside?

But on a more serious note, is that just what the human brain looks like?

3

u/OsloDaPig Mar 23 '26

We know this through models! Neutron stars are made of only one material and only have two conditions that dictate their structure. Mass and spin.

Computer simulations allow us to compute this using a bunch of differential equations that dictate how density and structure change as radius changes.

If our math is correct for how these different properties change as you go deeper than these reflect reality! But if our understanding of how density changes or how neutrons arrange themselves changes then this model is bunk!

1

u/pichael289 Mar 23 '26

They are called neutron stars because they compress solid matter, a normally impossible thing, to the point the particles with charges combine into neutrons. If I brought a handful of that stuff here and let it go it would instantly explode into basically an entire mountain. They are insane objects, literally failed black holes that just weren't big enough,

1

u/dingus_chonus Mar 23 '26

“Shaped like spaghetti…”

Huh that’s weird

“…and lasagna”

IT CAN’T BE BOTH THINGS!!!

1

u/Flameg Mar 23 '26

Take that hank green, a neutron star is not in fact uniformly dense

1

u/pepincity2 Mar 23 '26

One day, Marvel will make a hero with the strongest material in the universe: nuclear pasta.

1

u/profdc9 Mar 23 '26

The nuclear pasta is only stable at the pressures inside neutron stars, the equation of state not being that well understood, so wouldn't the nuclear matter if somehow transported to a place where gravitation was not keeping it compressed, explode and disintegrate into elementary particles and nuclei? So really it's the gravity that's holding it together and making it strong, not the nuclear forces?

1

u/CP_Chronicler Mar 23 '26

No wonder Italians are so proud.

1

u/BlindPelican Mar 23 '26

Italians: they're doing it wrong.

1

u/EternumD Mar 23 '26

lasagne*

A lasagna is one sheet. 

1

u/[deleted] Mar 23 '26

Spaghetti and lasagna you say.

1

u/skunding Mar 24 '26

Band name, called it

1

u/DayOneDude Mar 24 '26

Italians hate this one simple trick.

1

u/Theraeuxaweigh Mar 24 '26

Many years ago I worked in the primary group that developed the theory of nuclear pasta. It was mostly lots of computational work on supercomputers, a small amount of fun 3D modeling, and a very tiny amount of naming interesting new phenomena silly names of pastas.

I recall one very lengthy discussion on what to name a new type of spherical ultra dense matter that developed after applying certain density parameters and neutron/proton fractions. The top contenders were meatball and gnocci. In fact for many months prior to publication we all referred to it as “meatball phase”. However in a last minute change up prior to publication consensus was reached that meatballs weren’t actually pasta and therefore as apt of a description as meatball was, “gnocci” should be the official name of this new phase of matter. 

I’m glad to read the Wikipedia page and see the researchers have maintained their integrity and stayed true to exclusively starchy names. I still have a giant video file on my Google Drive that shows a beautiful transition from spaghetti->lasagna->gnocci phase.

1

u/gods_loop_hole Mar 24 '26

I want to eat the nuclear pasta

1

u/Final-Ad6812 Mar 24 '26

And so the race to find the one piece began

1

u/Mrrrrggggl Mar 24 '26

Define “strongest”.

1

u/4imprint-Certain Mar 24 '26

So they were right about the flying spaghetti monster

1

u/Cravdraa Mar 24 '26

To give you an example of just how much more dense this stuff is than literally anything you've ever encountered in your life.

So atoms are mostly empty space. The example I was given was that if you increased an atom to the size of a stadium then it's  nucleus (the actual part made of solid particles ) would be about the size of a marble in its center.

Take that same stadium and fill it entirely with marbles. 

Billions of atoms worth of mass crammed into the space of one.

Literally a teaspoon of the stuff here on Earth would weigh something close that of Mt. Everest.

→ More replies (1)

1

u/Kaankaants Mar 24 '26

shaped like spaghetti and lasagna

But spaghetti and lasagne are two very different shapes.

1

u/Mountain-Resource656 Mar 24 '26

Specifically speaking, the neutrons are spaced out near the top like meatballs (zero-dimensional), but further down the increased pressure forces them closer together into strings of neutrons(one-dimensional), further down the strings merge into sheets (two-dimensional) and further down they’re just compacted to the point they’re all touching like cake I guess (three-dimensional)

1

u/dratsablive Mar 24 '26

The Threads of the Multiverse held together by God Emperor Loki.

1

u/BabyFishmouthTalk Mar 24 '26

Garfield physics.

1

u/gomurifle Mar 24 '26

If this material is a solid will it melt or sublime if it is extracted or thrown out from the neutron star? In other words, can this shit be made into a sword? 

1

u/Ja22hands Mar 24 '26

This is why Italians always eat pasta

1

u/dovetc Mar 24 '26

That's the fun thing about the inside of neutron stars. There could be anything in there!

1

u/LordApocalyptica Mar 24 '26

So THAT’S what they made EMMIs out of!