How close to reality is the use of Neutronium in ST,SW,SG?

[PunkMaister]

Since all the popular "Star" franchises be it "Star" Trek, "Star" Wars or "Star"gate make use of Neutronium for anything like strengthening hulls to build killer cybernetic beings (Replicators) I wonder just how close to reality is the application of such a dense material for any of the purposes they are used in the 3 main "Star" franchises. We know that the heaviest and denser a material is, also the more radioactive it is. My guess is anybody within a hundred feet of a pound of neutronium would probably end up cooked by the radiation given off by the damn thing. There is also the fact that it would probably distort gravitiy and magnetism being so dense as well. So again just how practical is to even think using such a thing. It is obvious that 3 franchises have used artistic license without scientific basis other than is a dense and therefore strong material to use it in their storylines. What do you think?

[Cocytus]

Not very.

The silliness of sci-fi neutronium is will documented, but just to recap:

"Neutronium" refers to neutron-degenerate matter. Degenerate matter is matter composed not of atoms, but of individual subatomic particles in a superfluid (frictionless substance.) By virtue of the Pauli Exclusion Principle (which, in laymans terms, basically states that no two subatomic particles can occupy the same space at the same time) the degenerate matter builds up a tremendous outward pressure which is kept in check by the enormous gravitational forces conducive to its formation.

A star, for example, maintains its shape because the inward pressure of gravity is balanced by the outward pressure of fusion. A similar balance exists for degenerate matter, except that the outward pressure is not coming from fusion but from this degeneracy pressure. In the real world, were such exotic materials to be removed from the intense gravity that formed them, they would fly apart in a burst of radiation.

White dwarfs are made up primarily of electron degenerate matter. Since electrons mass considerably less than neutrons, they exert less pressure and therefore less energy is required to constrain them. The Chandrasekhar limit of about 1.4 solar masses is commonly given as the mass above which a star will collapse into a black hole. In fact, it is the mass limit for anything made of electron-degenerate matter. Above this mass limit, neutron-degenerate matter is formed.

Obviously use of neutronium in any application requires maintaining the gravitaional conditions that formed it, lest the material decay away. How they've managed to do this in Star Trek is never explained. Check ST-v-SW.net for more info on sci-fi neutronium.

That's the situation as I understand it. Anyone who may know more about quantum physics, feel free to chime in.

[Mike DiCenso]

That's pretty much the basic issues in a nutshell. The other issue that crops up is how the hell can you alloy neutronium with anything without the neutronium in the absence of significant gravity to crush down the electron shells, as they would just simply resume being normal atoms, or you'd have to turn all of the substance into neutronium by maintaining the intense gravity that makes it in the first place. The carbon-neutronium shell of the Dyson Sphere from TNG's "Relics" would be impossible to say the least , nor would the alleged neutronium alloyed hulls that some speculate for ISD hulls without some super-wonky tech.
-Mike

[2046]

I concur that "carbon neutronium" sounds absurd on its face, though since Trek actually shows neutronium in its natural environment we can be certain they meant what they said.

As far as interatomic bonds go, carbon-carbon bonds are among the most difficult to break. And carbon is only the sixth element. Were we to apply 20th Century reasoning to this 24th Century conundrum, we could conjecture one or more of the following:

1. That it was Worf talking and he was not being completely accurate in his description, and instead there are layers or something.

(I don't like this idea, because it requires the usual "so-and-so must be an idiot" reasoning that some fanboys use off the cuff when handed a puzzle.)

2. That the technobabble containment field keeping the neutronium in place has decayed (gradually/sporadically/whatever), and so far only elemental carbon has been light enough to develop and massive enough remain in place in the decay areas, making it appear as if a mixture is in place.

(This may be horsecrap. But pondering further:

Neutronium containment failure would result in leaking neutrons. Within about ten minutes of a neutron release incident, for instance, half the neutrons would have decayed into protons and electrons. We can thus imagine a cloud of hydrogen around the sphere. It seems awfully unlikely to me that the protons and remaining neutrons would clump into heavier elements, unless some very special conditions were in play. For instance, if the "leak" was barely a leak but more of a creep, remaining on the surface, and if the leak rate were high enough and neutron decay rate slow enough (assuming a stupid-high-gravity environment) and escape velocity tweaked just so to maybe allow lighter elements to slip away or end up 'falling back in' and being re-absorbed . . .

. . . I dunno. I'm thinking it might still be horsecrap. But it sounded cool.)

3. That the field has not decayed, but instead is built like a honeycomb for some unknown reason.

(This makes no sense to me, but then a lot of engineering decisions that make perfect sense when all the facts are considered seem really dumb on their face.)

(Oh wait, let's scratch 3 and make 3a: ... )

3a. That the neutronium containment is occurring within carbon nanotubes, buckyballs, or some other such fullerene, which perhaps via technobabble could transmit some sort of non-gravitational containment field. This would result in a sort of pelletized or lattice-work neutronium shell.

(Fullerenes are absurdly strong, and while there's no way they'd be able to hold up against the sort of pressure that makes neutronium, if you wanted a basic atomic structure in the vicinity of neutronium this would be among your first choices.

But perhaps that phrasing is putting the cart before the horse. What I'm thinking here is that the shell of the Dyson Sphere is nanotube based by design, but that the neutrons are densely packed within it until they reach or nearly reach a superfluid state. Assuming some buckyball connections between nanotubes to make a neutronium network across the hull, you'd have a gigantic thermal conductor, and perhaps the already retardedly strong nanotube sandwich would be even stronger with the added apparent density. You wouldn't be able to cut through it with heat and it might even help regulate thermal issues from within the sphere.

However, I don't know if nanotubes could pull this off. We've already experimented with putting very dense packets of hydrogen in buckyballs . . . where "very dense" is density near that believed to exist within the Jovian core, where hydrogen goes metallic and approaches electron degeneracy. Could it be pushed further, perhaps even with as-yet-undreamt of fullerenes, to the point where a neutronium-like density of neutrons is packed in? Hell if I know. I'm just thinking out of my ass here.

That said, there are indications that buckyballs can contain radiation sources including neutron radiation, but this is apparently partially a result of their natural spin, a property one paper calls "resonant relativistic absorption" (how's that for a Treknobabble-sounding real science term?). So the earlier concept of a latticework of nanotubes and buckyballs in a static sort of configuration might not be a valid one. Best to presume some badass fullerene. Another advantage there is that, in theory, you wouldn't necessarily have to supply power to the hull to make it hold together, as we might expect with some neutronium containment field.

But anyway, assuming any of this is less than total BS, it would be a good reason for the dumb honeycomb idea from the original 3.)

Anyway, I've made my brain hurt now, and I've probably unleased massive volumes of half-baked conjecturing, but maybe somewhere in there is the correct direction to go to if we wish to understand the Trek pseudoscience of whatever equivalent century the Dyson Sphere builders inhabited (for they were, after all, far beyond the 24th).

[User1356]

None of them are realistic in any way

[Mike DiCenso]

None of each franchises' depiction of neutronium? Or did you mean RSA's concepts for how the Dyson sphere carbon-neutronium shell alloy would work?
-Mike

[User1356]

None of each franchises' depiction of neutronium?
-Mike

This

[Mike DiCenso]

All righty. Which then do you think is the closest depiction of what we understand Real Life neutronium to be like?
-Mike

[Jedi Master Spock]

Actually, probably the best that we've seen neutronium portrayed is in "The Doomsday Machine."

You'd want some sort of really strange field to stabilize neutronium in smaller quantities in a rigid shape; the doomsday machine has such a field surrounding it, something which prevents matter-antimatter reactions. Perhaps it also prevents the decay of the neutronium - although the doomsday machine is actually very massive, and it wouldn't be as hard to stabilize neutronium in that sort of quantity - your gravity problem is getting pretty serious at that point.

Which brings us to our next point: The doomsday machine literally consumes planets, and yet is only a few kilometers long. In order to contain Earth-order mass in such a volume, you have fairly few choices - degenerate matter or quantum singularities pretty much have to be involved out of our standard list of options. I.e., neutronium or black holes. So in the case of "The Doomsday Machine," we have (a) mechanisms that can be used to justify neutronium being stabilized, and (b) reason to believe there's somewhere near that kind of hull density.

We have no clue how the machine maintains its cone shape and how the mouth doesn't collapse inward, but that's the usual sci-fi engineering issues. Sufficiently advanced technology and all that.

Most of the other representations are completely messed up. Maybe the neutronium alloy stuff is supposed to mean materials impregnated with stabilized "fibers" of neutrons or some other unusual construction, but even then, it's positively bizarre, and we also would expect to see the material being incredibly dense, which we rarely see evidence of.

[PunkMaister]

Actually, probably the best
Most of the other representations are completely messed up. Maybe the neutronium alloy stuff is supposed to mean materials impregnated with stabilized "fibers" of neutrons or some other unusual construction, but even then, it's positively bizarre, and we also would expect to see the material being incredibly dense, which we rarely see evidence of.

Indeed in Stargate the only time we see evidence of the massive density of neutronium is when they forced them to coalesce into one giant mass in their planet in SGA which creates so such a massively dense mass it actually sinks down to the planet's core de-stabilizing it and causing it's destruction.

[Mike DiCenso]

We have no clue how the machine maintains its cone shape and how the mouth doesn't collapse inward, but that's the usual sci-fi engineering issues. Sufficiently advanced technology and all that.

That's noe of the big problems that still remains is so you might generate a technobabble field that not only dampens out AM/M reactions, but also holds the neutronium in state without it flying apart, but how the hell do you shape the damn stuff into a miles long cornucopia of doom, and at the same time still have any systems inside it that can still operate in such a hostile enviroment? And yes, the thing would be insanely massive given it's length and the apparent thickness of the neutronium hull. Several tens of meters thick in the original, and easily up to 100 meters thick in the remastered version.
-Mike

[Mr. Oragahn]

Just dumb suggestion, but perhaps neutronium is a loose term for substance that would actually be an atom composed of stupidly high amounts of neutrons, but not too much though so it might occur more or less naturally.
So much neutrons that the atom would be called neutronium, for lack of fancier names.

... ...

[Mike DiCenso]

And so how would that work in making a super-dense and nearly indestructable material?
-Mike

[Mr. Oragahn]

It wouldn't be a super invincible material, but at least you could find naturally I suppose. Then some technology could "enhance" it, via impossible powers or technobabble.

[PunkMaister]

It wouldn't be a super invincible material, but at least you could find naturally I suppose. Then some technology could "enhance" it, via impossible powers or technobabble.

Problem is in all 3 franchises it is obvious that is a material with ultra dense properties.