As it turns out, the Milky Way isn’t the only cosmic entity with a chocolatey connotation.
More than 60 years after they were first discovered, scientists working to understand the structure of neutron stars finally have a perfect point of comparison: chocolate pralines.
Neutron stars, which form when supermassive stars collapse, are extremely compact and dense — physicists describe them as having a mass similar to the sun compressed into a sphere the size of a large city.
Such extreme conditions cannot be replicated in the laboratory, so the researchers have done their work to better understand what exactly makes up neutron stars.
Using hundreds of thousands of so-called equations of state to describe the properties of stars, a team from Goethe University Frankfurt has discovered a new point of reference.
“Light” neutron stars (mass less than about 1.7 solar masses) appear to have soft mantles and hard cores, while “heavy” neutron stars (mass greater than 1.7 solar masses) have hard mantles and soft cores.
Just to illustrate the density of neutron stars, one solar mass means the mass of the sun, which itself is estimated to be 330,000 times the mass of Earth.
The key equation behind this discovery is the speed of sound, which measures how fast a sound wave bounces off an object.
This will depend on the hardness or softness of the material used here on Earth to explore the Earth’s interior and find petroleum deposits.
For more on science and technology, explore the future with Sky News at Big Ideas Live 2022.
Learn more and book tickets here
Professor Luciano Rezzolla, who led the university team, said: “This result is very interesting because it allows us to directly measure the compressibility of the centre of a neutron star.
“Neutron stars apparently behave a bit like chocolate pralines: light stars are similar to those with hazelnuts in the center, surrounded by soft chocolate, while heavy stars can be thought of more like chocolate with a hard layer containing a soft filling.”
Although they are pleased with the latest findings, physicists say many mysteries remain about neutron stars, including their exact structure and composition.