BrainStuff Classics: What Is Nuclear Pasta?

No, it's not radioactive noodles -- nuclear pasta is the term for weird material produced in neutron stars. Learn why astrophysicists are so interested in how it works in this classic episode of BrainStuff, based on this article: https://science.howstuffworks.com/nuclear-pasta-is-super-macaroni-universe.htm

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of I Heart Radio.
Hey brain Stuff, Lauren Vogel bomb here with another classic
episode from the vault. This one gets into the weird
astrophysics of the strongest known material in the universe, Nuclear pasta,
Hey brain Stuff, Laurin Vogel bomb here. Nuclear pasta might

(00:24):
sound like a fancy concoction cooked up by a chef
working in molecular astronomy, but it's actually light years away,
literally from the spaghetti you'd find in the kitchen. This
weird kind of noodle is needed below the crust of
neutron stars, and in a new study, a powerful computer
simulation has taken a stab at manipulating this stellar noodle
and found that it's the strongest material in the cosmos.

(00:48):
So how did this nuclear pasta become the super Macaroni
of the universe. Well, it's because it's created inside neutron stars,
which act like extreme pressure cookers. Neutron stars are these
stellar corpses of massive stars that have run out of
fuel and exploded as supernova. These tiny, fast spinning objects
are only a dozen or so miles wide and yet

(01:09):
pack in the entire mass of our Sun. They're so
dense that only a teaspoonful of neutron star matter weighs
as much as a mountain on Earth. Neutron stars are
therefore not composed of normal matter, but rather what astrophysicists
call degenerate matter. It's not an insult, it's just the
term for extremely compact neutrons that are crushed together under

(01:30):
incredibly powerful gravitational forces. A neutron star is extreme gravity
makes its outer layers freeze solid as a crust with
a liquid core below. Underneath the crust, powerful forces royal
between the neutrons and protons inside the neutron stars matter,
causing the material to take on some surprising shapes like
long cylinders and flat planes. Astrophysicists refer to these shapes

(01:54):
as things like lasagna, spaghetti, and nioki, and collectively as
nuclear pasta. As astrophysicists get to make their own fun.
Understanding how this nuclear pasta works is a key concern.
Researcher Matthew Kaplan, a postdoctoral research fellow at McGill University,
set in a statement, the strength of the neutron star crust,

(02:14):
especially the bottom of the crust, is relevant to a
large number of astrophysics problems, but isn't well understood their
outer layers, the part we actually observe, so we need
to understand that in order to interpret astronomical observations of
these stars. To get a better understanding of this noodlely
mess Kaplan and his team created the most complex computer

(02:35):
simulation ever carried out on neutron star crusts to understand
how they warp and break. It turns out that nuclear
pasta is way beyond Al Dente. It's the strongest known
material in the universe. This is especially important as physicists
can now measure gravitational waves, the ripples in space time
caused by massive cosmic objects like neutron stars and black

(02:57):
holes spinning, colliding, and merging. The st of neutron stars
is therefore very important for science to understand. In fact,
lone neutron stars may produce their own weak gravitational waves
by creating rigid mountains in their crests. As neutron stars spin,
these mountains would disturb space time like a propeller cutting
through a calm lake surface, generating a constant source of

(03:19):
gravitational waves that we may be able to detect in
the future. Kaplan said, a lot of interesting physics is
going on here under extreme conditions, and so understanding the
physical properties of a neutron star is a way for
scientists to test their theories and models. With this result,
many problems need to be revisited. How large a mountain
can you build on a neutron star before the crust

(03:40):
breaks and it collapses, What will it look like, and
most importantly, how can astronomers observe it? So the next
time you're boiling your penny, take a minute to ponder
the mountains of nuclear Pasta that could feed us a
lot about the nature of neutron stars. Today's episode is

(04:00):
based on the article nuclear Pasta is the super Macaroni
of the Universe on how stuff Works dot com, written
by Ian O'Neill. Brain Stuff is production of iHeart Radio
in partnership with how stuff Works dot Com, and it's
produced by Tyler Clang. Four more podcasts my Heart Radio,
visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
listen to your favorite shows.