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Ahandgesture t1_itzjl9d wrote

Reply to comment by Phalcone42 in Would heavy unstable elements at the core of a star have a significantly extended half-life due to gravity? by SpectralMagic

So the gravity prevents neutron decay after the 830 or so seconds we expect? Or at this point is the matter too exotic at that point to apply thinking like this?

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noldig t1_itzm5gt wrote

Not completely, there is still neutron decay going on, but it is heavily surpressed because of electron degeneracy pressure, and balanced by electron capture

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Ahandgesture t1_itzmhnb wrote

Interesting, thank you for the answer! I wonder what the neutron lifetime in this case is. There's already the discrepancy between beamline and "jar" lifetime experiments. If we could measure neutron decay in a neutron star, we'd probably have another point of discrepancy 😆

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noldig t1_itzmxzz wrote

The lifetime will mostly depend on phase space and temperature, so two quantities a free neutron doesn't care about. But these processes are responsible for cooling neutron stars down so we try to measure it. I have computed the rate a few times but never converted the units haha I will check

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