Piece of neutron star on earth

[Nuno]

Hi everyone,

I was just wondering what will happen if we drop an 1cm^3 piece of a neutron star from 1 meter height on our earth's ground. I know this is impossible but I was just imagining what would happen because the energy of impact would be giant (I think) for a tiny surface area of the ground.

Does it create a giant crater or what?

Cheers

[ronin]

I would suspect a small hole and it would sink to the centre of the earth.

Might be dense but 1cc from 1 metre I cannot see causing a crater, a fair bit of a crater is the impactor pushing the material it hits out of the way, and a 1cc lump isn't going to have much to push out of the way.

[JulianO]

It will fall as every other body does, because objects fall at the same speed regardless of mass (neglecting air resistance...). It will hit the floor at about 4m/s.

It won't make much of a crater, but because it is so dense, it will sink rapidly to the center of the Earth, where it will come to rest.

I estimate it's weight at ~ 370 000 000 tons, which is a tiny fraction of Earths mass. I suspect in reality it won't stay compressed to a cube either, but rapidly expand to some volume about the size of mount Everest.

[AlexB67]

Whatever you do, don't try and drop it on your  toe .  It is said, I think Deep sky videos has a little snippet on neutron stars, and  IIRC, one teaspoon weighs of the order of 10¹² kg, could be a painful experiment. There is a reason  they don't keep these things in a laboratory flask and that they are not on the syllabus of to do experiments in science courses :0)

[Alien 13]

Im still trying to imagine the size of the transporter and crane to lift it into position for the drop!!!!!!!!!!!

[acey]

Neutron star material can only exist inside a neutron star, i.e. under conditions where the pressure is so great that atomic nuclei are squeezed to become pure neutrons. It is not only very dense, it is also very hot. If you could somehow extract a piece of this matter with a matter transporter then it would no longer be under pressure and would explode.

The pure neutrons are found only towards the centre of a neutron star; the outermost layer would consist of extremely dense iron, and I think you should be able to release some of that with a matter transporter without it exploding (though it would still be very hot).

When you drop it on the ground it will do the same thing as any other object with an enormous mass, i.e. make a big hole.

More dramatic would be to try and get hold of some "strange matter". It is thought likely that this exists at the centre of neutron stars but it is hypothesised that it may also exist elsewhere in the universe in stable form, in small isolated amounts. It would consist of up, down and strange quarks in equal proportions. One hypothesis is that the stablity of strange matter increases as the mass increases, in which case, if strange matter were to come into contact with ordinary atomic matter, it would turn the latter into strange matter. So if you were to bring some to Earth using a matter transporter, and drop it, then it would immediately start converting the atmosphere to strange matter as it fell, and would continue to do so while burrowing into the Earth. The result would be the complete destruction of life on our planet.

[Macavity]

Recalls the old "exercise" for students. If you could drill a hole right through the earth and drop a weight down it...

The solution appears below! Maybe if small black holes were stable (sadly not) ...or you had a lump of dark matter? 

A black hole, like Foucaults Pendulum, coming back to it's point of origin - Taking a BITE out of the earth each time.

http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/mechanics/earthole.html

[CumbrianGadgey]

to answer the original question:

Using an average neutron star density of 4.8x10^17 kg/m3, the energy at impact would be 4.7x10^12 joules.

This is roughly the equivalent of a 1 kilotonne high explosive bomb, or about 6% of the energy liberated by little boy, the hiroshima fission bomb.

Still pretty impressive. I reckon that  might even be enough to knock some sense into a politician, were it to land on his head.

Drop it from a few hundred metres and the impact would be more like that of a hydrogen bomb. Let's hope it never starts raining bits of neutron star...I fear my brollie wouldn't cope.