Neutron Stars

Modern science is riddled with theories that are presented as facts to the general public. As Mark Twain bluntly put it: "There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact."

This is especially true in astrophysics, where distant objects are given all sorts of exotic properties based on a handful of observed facts. As an example, we have the neutron star. Virtually all literature on it is presented as facts when in reality it is mainly conjecture.

All that we know from observations is that there are some distant objects that emit little to no visible light, yet radiate strongly in radio-wave and x-ray bandwidths. To conclude from this that we are dealing with stars made up of super-dense matter is quite a stretch of the imagination. The observations may just as well be caused by electromagnetic interactions between stellar bodies, in which case no super-dense matter is required.

Further undermining the conventional interpretation is the fact that the observed radiation has glitches in it. While very regular in general, there are little lapses ever now and again, something that is easy to explain electrically, but very difficult to explain in terms of gravitation and rotation. The best explanation they could come up with was that neutron stars undergo seismic tremors that upset the rotation rate from time to time.

The whole premise of the existence of neutron stars is also dodgy. The idea is that stars in a certain size range will collapse into this kind of body when they run out of fuel. But is this necessarily true?

Gravitational collapse defies the laws of thermodynamics, in that it suggests that a system can do work on itself. It also presupposes that gravity is a continuous force that is completely unaffected by matter when transmitted, but very receptive to matter when communicated. However, in the strict particle model of physics suggested in my book there are limits to how dense something can be before the electric, magnetic and gravitational forces break down, because these forces are transmitted through an aether.

The only reason gravity can be communicated from the center of a body is that matter is made up of atoms that are largely empty space. The aether has plenty of room to communicate information from the center of objects and out into the surrounding space. However, if all this space would disappear, as would be the case for a body made up of nothing but neutrons, then there would be no room for the aether to enter and leave. Gravity would not be communicated for the whole body. Only the outer surface would do this, making neutron stars very weak when it comes to gravity. Hence, there's nothing to keep neutron stars from reverting to ordinary matter.

Neutron stars do not exist for much the same reason that free neutrons do not exist for more than a few minutes after leaving an atomic nucleus. With no space between the proton and the electron, there is no electric force keeping the neutron from decaying into a proton and an electron. Gravity will similarly be non-existent inside a neutron star, and therefore unable to keep it together.

Free neutron decay