Re: Two neutron stars on a collision course?

On 2008-03-05, Crown-Horned Snorkack <chornedsnorkack@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> But the whole pressure energy is expended to lift the matter out of
> the gravity well.

No, it's the extra energy from the collision that does that.


> So, does bulk neutron star matter get converted into tritium?

I am absolutely certain that if you had bulk neutron matter and
released the pressure, the timescale for conversion to tritium would
be far, far greater than the timescale for neutrons to leave the area
at great speed in isolation.  I'm sure you'd get some tritium, but not
much in proportion.

If you could contain the stuff as you slowly expanded a confined
volume, the most stable final state would probably be iron.  Somewhere
in the range between free explosion and slow expansion there might be
a possibility of bulk tritium production.


- Tim