Re: Two neutron stars on a collision course?

On 6 m=E4rts, 02:03, Tim Little <t...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> On 2008-03-05, Crown-Horned Snorkack <chornedsnork...@[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.
>
The extra energy from the collision lifts the matter from the surface
upwards. However, the matter is first lifted to the surface expending
the pressure energy.

> > 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.

Probably nickel.

But the conversion would be extremely slow. Nuclear fusion and fission
require high temperature and density for a prolonged time. A lot of
energy could be released by fission of lead into iron, but
nevertheless lead is stable.

> Somewhere
> in the range between free explosion and slow expansion there might be
> a possibility of bulk tritium production.
>
> - Tim