We live in an incredible new era of astronomy, where faint ripples in spacetime caused by the collisions of distant black holes are being discovered and studied. And gravitational waves, which were "caught" last year by the LIGO detector, made it possible for scientists to look into the very center of neutron stars to make sure if there is exotic quark matter in their bowels.
At its core, a neutron star is the remains of large stars that perished due to a very strong supernova explosion. The center of the star, which so perished, is compressed to a small ball, which in size does not exceed the size of a large city on Earth. The matter in this ball is compressed so strongly that protons and electrons converge in the nuclei of atoms, and the remnants of the star become a lump of neutrons of incredible sizes.
Today scientists argue about what neutron stars really are, what layers they represent, what they have inside. Someone suggests that the bowels of these stars are very compressed. In this regard, the pressure that is created inside allows the quarks to get out of the influence of nuclear forces, escaping to a certain extent. This is how exotic quark matter is formed.
Using computer simulations, scientists have determined when such matter forms in the center of neutron stars. The model was built using information that was obtained by LIGO as part of the detection of gravitational waves.
Based on the data obtained, the scientists concluded that matter in a similar guise can exist in neutron stars even at the highest temperature indices in their depths. These figures are in excess of a trillion degrees Kelvin. Experts now believe that the new data will help to understand what exactly makes up neutron stars. In this they will be helped by LIGO or other observatories that will be able to contemplate how these objects merge with white dwarfs and black holes.