Exotic Stars
An exotic star is a compact star composed of something other than electrons, protons, and neutrons balanced against gravitational collapse by degeneracy pressure or other quantum properties. These include strange stars (composed of strange matter) and the more speculative preon stars (composed of preons).
Exotic stars are largely theoretical, but observations released by the Chandra X-Ray Observatory on April 10, 2002 detected two candidate strange stars, designated RX J1856.5-3754 and 3C58, which had previously been thought to be neutron stars. Based on the known laws of physics, the former appeared much smaller and the latter much colder than they should, suggesting that they are composed of material denser than neutronium. However, these observations are met with skepticism by researchers who say the results were not conclusive.
Read more about this topic: Compact Star
Famous quotes containing the words exotic and/or stars:
“Anthropology has always struggled with an intense, fascinated repulsion towards its subject.... [The anthropologist] submits himself to the exotic to confirm his own inner alienation as an urban intellectual.”
—Susan Sontag (b. 1933)
“The stars are scattered all over the sky like shimmering tears, there must be great pain in the eye from which they trickled.”
—Georg Büchner (1813–1837)