Hardness is the ultimate pursuit of materials by human beings, so in human history, from the Stone Age to the Bronze Age, and finally to the Iron Age, what changes is the hardness of the material. Later, humans have successively discovered hard substances such as diamond and Rupert's Tears. So far, the hardest substance ever discovered by humans is carbonyne.
Carbonyne structure
If you don't meet the hardness of these substances, then look to the universe and look for matter that is harder than Earth's carbon alkyne. At this time, we will find that the hardness of these substances on the earth is all brothers. The hardness of matter in the universe is ridiculously high, and the blame is often hundreds of millions of times that of the earth's material. Imagine these things hitting the Earth, can the Earth afford it?
The hardest existence here is the nuclear pasta of neutron stars.
neutron star
Neutron stars are the names of celestial bodies in the universe and the most densely populated stars in the entire universe, with an average density of more than 100 million tons per cubic centimeter. Imagine if you were to compress the Earth to this density, the diameter of the Earth would be a pitiful 22 meters. How did such a high-density neutron star come about?
Neutron stars are tombstones after the death of massive stars, somewhere between white dwarfs and black holes, and between them and the black hole there is a conceptual star quark star. Nothing in the universe is eternal, and even glowing stars have a day of death. Take our sun as an example, it is now in its prime, in the main sequence star period, the most stable continuous output of heat, and then in about 5 billion years, after the hydrogen fusion reaction above the sun is completed, our sun will enter middle age. At this time, its interior collapsed because it became helium, and finally it became a red giant star, and finally a white dwarf star.
However, there are stars in the universe that are much more massive than the Sun, and after the completion of the main sequence star, they will form red supergiants due to the greater collapse force inside. Because the collapse is so big, it will throw out all the material outside itself to produce a supernova explosion. After the explosion, the remaining massive kernel will have two endings, one is to become a black hole, and the other is to become a neutron star.
In general, stars with masses of more than 8 suns will enter red supergiants and explode to form neutron stars or black holes. Because the core still retains its original energy, it will be emitted in a pulsed manner, and some neutron stars will become pulsars. The density of neutron stars is mainly due to the large mass of the parent star, and the collapsed core volume is very small compared to what it once was, resulting in a piece of neutron star material the size of a sugar cube with a mass of 100 million tons.
Such a high density naturally produces the hardest matter in the universe.
The hardest substance on Earth
In ancient times, humans thought that stones were the hardest substances, so our ancestors picked up stones on the ground and smashed them at our prey. Sure enough, the animal that was hit by the stone was light and the head was broken and bleeding, and the heavy one was killed on the spot. When smashing prey with a stone, the stone collides with the stone causing the crack to crack, and the edge of the crack is sharp.
The ancestors of humans accidentally cut their hands while carrying stones, so they found that the stones would have a fracture after impact, and the fracture was so sharp that it could cut the skin and flesh. However, when making this tool, it is necessary to find a harder stone as a percussion body. This is the first time that humans have been relatively hard in nature.
Later, human beings developed civilization, learned to smelt metal, and obtained the first metal product in human history, bronze. People found that no matter what it was, as long as it was slashed by a sword made of bronze, it would be crushed to pieces. We believe that bronze is a substance harder than rock, because it is possible to chisel the mountain stone with a chisel made of bronze to build roads.
Then, people found a substance that was harder than bronze - steel. On the battlefield, the steel sword split the bronze sword, announcing the arrival of a new king. Since then, it has been believed that steel is almost the hardest material that humans have found for themselves. But it soon became apparent that the potential of non-metallic materials was beyond imagination.
The hardest known substance on Earth is carbonyne, a carbon chain of carbon atoms in the form of trivalent bonds, which is essentially carbon, but because of its internal structure, it has created its ultra-high hardness. Carbonyne is about a hundred times harder than steel. Carbon doesn't give the impression of a hard substance, but on the contrary, it is soft and can burn for heating. But whether it is diamond or later carbon alkyne, it has become one of the hardest substances on the earth.
This is because carbon is very "malleable" and can form various chemical bonds, which is also the basis of its ability to become our life. We call ourselves carbon-based life, that is, our organic matter is a combination of carbon atoms as the main chain, hydroxide and nitrogen as additives.
That is to say, the hardest matter on Earth is made of carbon atoms. So what are the main components of the material above the neutron star?
neutron
Neutron stars, as the name suggests, are planets made up mainly of neutrons. We all know that atoms are made up of nuclei and peripheral electrons, which in turn are made up of protons and neutrons. Neutrons are particles that are not charged and have a much smaller mass than protons, and were first discovered in the famous Rutherford experiment of bombarding gold leaf with atoms.
Originally in an atom, protons, electrons, and neutrons do not interfere with each other, they maintain all the motion of the atom. However, during the formation of neutron stars, a supernova explosion occurs, causing the protons and electrons of atoms to be thrown out. Because protons are positively charged and electrons are negatively charged, they bind to each other in the universe, and the product of this combination is the neutron. Together with the neutrons left in the nuclei of the previously ruptured parent star, together they form a neutron star.
Neutrons are one of the three major particles that make up atoms, and they are not charged, but they are particularly susceptible to entering the nucleus. If it is used to bombard the nucleus of an atom, it will lead to a nuclear reaction and release a huge amount of energy, which is the neutron bullet developed by humans. Four neutrons form a particle called a "four neutrons", also known as "element zero". This particle is not charged and is isotopic with other neutrons. However, at present, there is no clear theoretical proof of this "four neutrons", and its appearance is very much like an accident.
Because neutrons are not charged, it is simply a fantasy to combine them, they will not attract each other, nor will they repel each other, so they remain independent and do not interfere with each other. So, four neutrons combined into particles, which is almost impossible. However, scientists believe that perhaps the appearance of "four neutrons" in that year was a coincidence, but if it is in a very complex space, such as neutron stars, it is possible to exist. Because the structure of atoms has been completely changed after the big bang of supernovae, we cannot use the usual atomic theory to look at the situation on neutron stars.
What's inside a neutron star?
So in what form will a very dense neutron star be formed on a neutron star?
Nuclear pasta
Nuclear pasta sounds delicious, but it is actually a "hard dish" with a hardness 10 billion times that of steel, and no one in the world can bite into this pasta.
Neutron stars are gravitationally second only to black holes in the universe, so light can escape around neutron stars, but the escape route bends. Therefore, it is impossible for us to land on neutron stars, and the huge gravitational force will cause all the massive material above to collapse. Therefore, scientists can only use computer simulations to derive a simulated internal structure of a neutron star. The computer presented the simulated neutron star composition in front of everyone, and everyone was stunned!
Because the gravitational pull of a neutron star is enormous, the further you go inside the neutron star, the more structure it feels like a spaghetti dough. The enormous pressure of the supernova explosion brought neutrons and protons together to form a spherical-like nucleus, and neutrons and protons are part of the nucleus, hence the name nuclear pasta.
The spherical dough is not the only structure of the nuclear pasta, the more internally it compresses, the protons do not have enough electric repulsion to maintain the spherical shape, and the spherical nuclear structure is pressed into a long strip of spaghetti. Compression continues to escalate, and the nucleus becomes a flaky pasta.
These "spaghetti" make up extremely dense neutron stars, which naturally become the hardest matter in the universe. This is the ultimate hardcore dish that Neutron Star presents to the whole universe! But what is the role of this "hard dish"? Is it just used to "fill" the stomach of a neutron star? Of course not, there are some sub-stars that emit pulsar waves, called pulsars. Not every neutron star is a pulsar, and only neutron stars with a short rotation period can produce pulses. And it is these "pasta" that determine this cycle.
Astronomers have found that pulsars are caused by the energy released by neutron stars, and that pulsars essentially rotate much slower than ordinary neutron stars. However, after research, it was found that among the known pulsars, the rotation period did not exceed 12 seconds. This is because the pulsars are not evenly distributed, causing residual electrons and protons to generate magnetic fields during rotation.
If this magnetic field is allowed to intensify, electromagnetic waves will be generated at the poles of the pulsar, releasing energy and slowing down the rotation of the pulsar. However, the nuclear pasta combines protons and neutrons to weaken the magnetic field, and although it still emits electromagnetic waves, it retains a large amount of energy from the pulsar and continues to rotate at high speed.
In addition, we all know that the gravitational pull of neutron stars is second only to black holes, and if you don't consider the concept of stars quark stars, it is the second largest gravitational force in the universe. Light can escape around the neutron star, but the escape route will bend because the space near the neutron star is distorted. In addition to the excessive gravitational pull, the reason for the distortion is that the nuclear pasta will make the surface of the neutron star uneven, and there will be peaks only a few centimeters in height. It was just a few peaks that were enough to bend the space around the spinning neutron star. In the curved space, the neutron star is constantly releasing energy outward, which forms gravitational waves.
Gravitational wave model of binary neutron star merger
That is, nuclear pasta is most likely one of the conditions under which gravitational waves occur. Gravitational waves, a substance predicted by Einstein's general theory of relativity, have now been shown to exist in humans, and they come from high-speed rotating double pulsars.
Study the meaning of "pasta"
So what does these "pasta" mean to us? Not to eat it, of course, but to help us achieve interstellar travel.
There's a lot of energy in the universe, but there's a lot of it that humans can't use. Nuclear pasta is a structure simulated by humans through computers, and human experiments have occasionally existed "four neutron" structures, which means that in the future, humans can simulate the environment of neutron stars and create nuclear pasta. Neutron stars have a huge amount of energy and are not in danger of black holes, which we can use to provide energy for the spacecraft.
In addition, the distorted space around neutron stars is the basis of curvature accelerators and wormhole technology, and whether the future can approach the speed of light can be worked in this direction.
Wormhole (imaginary)
Future explorations
Who would have thought that there was a "spaghetti" structure of matter in the universe, and that this substance was the hardest existence in the universe. The universe is 14 billion years old, 96 billion light-years in diameter, and the range of human exploration is only a very small part. Of course, the scope of human progress in the universe will not be limited to this.
Today, humanity's footsteps have not yet expanded beyond the solar system, and we have not even figured out where the boundaries of our own solar system are, let alone to neutron stars, and nuclear spaghetti seems to be far away from us. But we can't give up research just because we haven't reached neutron stars yet, and maybe one day nuclear pasta will accidentally appear in human studies just like the "four neutrons" structure of that year. Even a glimpse is enough to illustrate the great progress of human science and technology.