Re: Jar of neutrons
From: Sbharris[atsign]ix.netcom.com (sbharris_at_ix.netcom.com)
Date: 02/19/05
- Next message: Albert: "Re: Epistemology 201: The Science of Science"
- Previous message: whopkins_at_csd.uwm.edu: "Re: A Treatise On Quantum Theory II (was: Textbook on quantum mechanics)"
- In reply to: matt271829-news_at_yahoo.co.uk: "Jar of neutrons"
- Next in thread: Keith F. Lynch: "Re: Jar of neutrons"
- Reply: Keith F. Lynch: "Re: Jar of neutrons"
- Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ]
Date: 18 Feb 2005 16:10:19 -0800
You couldn't do it. Neutrons are 10^-5 the size of atoms, and they just
slip right through walls made of atoms like buckshot through a
sculpture of chickenwire.
If you could somehow contain the neutrons in some magical container of
thin neutronium, I suppose they'd behave pretty much like any ideal
gas. Should be a gas, because the neutron-neutron interaction would not
keep them together, so they'd bounce off each other at mach 7.6 on
average.They would be pretty much like a jar of hydrogen, except with
half the density of H2, of course (roughly 1/22.4 gram per liter at
STP, or half that of H2 at STP). Transparent, since no light interacts.
Cool them enough and eventually you'd probably get some kind of liquid,
like liquid helium-3 at very very close to absolute zero. A Bose
condensate of neutron-pairs, as in He-3. But with the density of
neutronium, which is roughly that of atomic nuclei. On the order of
10^14 kg per liter (the cube of the 10^-5 factor in size difference,
for obvious reasons). Maybe it would be a solid-- I don't know. But
ought to still be transparent, I would think, since there are no
charges in neutronium to interact with light.
SBH
- Next message: Albert: "Re: Epistemology 201: The Science of Science"
- Previous message: whopkins_at_csd.uwm.edu: "Re: A Treatise On Quantum Theory II (was: Textbook on quantum mechanics)"
- In reply to: matt271829-news_at_yahoo.co.uk: "Jar of neutrons"
- Next in thread: Keith F. Lynch: "Re: Jar of neutrons"
- Reply: Keith F. Lynch: "Re: Jar of neutrons"
- Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ]
Relevant Pages
|
