RE: Heating up neutron stars with dark matter
Very nice read @lemouth :-)
After a supernova explosion, the remnants of the star are mostly neutrons, packed in a sphere of 10-20 km of radius that roughly weighs three solar masses.
Such masses are very hard to imagine. If we cut out a small piece (1 x 1 x 1 cm) from a Neutron Star of 20km radius, this would be roughly 1,780,573,758,736 kg for this 1cm³. I hope I didn't make a miscalculation, there are too many zeros in those numbers. That sounds crazy and impossible, but in reality, it's not even the most massive.
Typical neutron stars cotnain about of 1055 muons, which is more than enough to capture dark matter. This capture transfers heat from dark matter to the neutron star, so that the star temperature could go up by a few hundreds to a couple of thousands of degrees.
So the Muons will act as a "bridge"that will allow dark matter to interact with detectable matter besides the gravitational force?
Thanks for the reading and the questions! It is really appreciated! ;)
The reality is actually much more complicated than that. Neutron stars are by far not uniform. Whilst the density at the border of the star is 'only' of about 100 tons per cm3, it increases by a factor of 1 billion when one moves towards the center of the star. However, the truth is that whilst we have a good idea of what is going on with the first layers of the star, the central layer is a total unknown and a challenge for theoretical physics (we can see a neutron stars as made of an outer and inner curst, as well an outer and inner core; the inner core is a total mystery for us).
Exactly. Dark matter would have, on top of its usual gravitational interactions, an extra direct interaction with muons.
I hope it clarifies!
You*'re welcome :-)
Thank you very much for your explanations.
I think I need to read much deeper into Neutron Stars and particle physics, these are very exciting objects. I also hope to read more from you about it in short ;-)
For particle physics, I can recommend this that I wrote many months ago. It gives link to several introductory posts on particle physics.
For the neutron stars, I am by far not an expert, but this is a great start.
From there, we can of course continuing discussing (and feel free to question me).
Thank you very much @lemouth :-)
Very kind for picking out the links. I hope to update my knowledge in these regions. I also picked out some stuff, just need to find a quiet hour to get in it.
If I have further questions, I will come back to you :-)
I repeat: please don't hesitate :D