Neutron-star cores contain matter at the highest densities reached in our present-day universe, with as much as two solar masses of matter compressed inside a sphere of 25 km in diameter. These ...

Atoms are made of three things: protons, neutrons, and electrons. Electrons are a type of fundamental particle, but protons and neutrons are composite particles made of up and down quarks. Protons ...

Strange matter only occurs under very specific circumstances -- and astrophysicists are getting closer to understanding what ...

Scientists are dreaming up ways to probe the nature of the Universe’s smallest bits—quarks—by observing ultra-dense neutron stars slamming into each other. Particle colliders in Switzerland and on ...

Dark star crashes: the computer simulation of two merging neutron stars (left) blended with an image of heavy-ion collisions at CERN to highlight the connection of astrophysics with nuclear physics.

Simulation of two neutron stars colliding (Credit: C Breu, L Rezzolla) Gravitational waves could be the key to detecting a new phase transition to quark matter when two neutron stars merge. In ...

Small Very Fast Rotating (VFR) asteroids (bodies with rotation periods as short as 25 sec) are consistent with a population of strange asteroids [with quark dark matter] with core masses of order ...

Scientists have presented findings from three Large Hadron Collider (LHC) experiments that study lead ion collisions at the annual Quark Matter conference, held this year in Annecy, France. The ...

Artist’s impression of the different layers inside a massive neutron star, with the red circle representing a sizable quark-matter core. New theoretical analysis places the likelihood of massive ...

New theoretical analysis places the likelihood of massive neutron stars hiding cores of deconfined quark matter between 80 and 90 percent. The result was reached through massive supercomputer runs ...