Old article, but still cool. I only know about physics from pulp sci-fi novels but the "Island of stability" makes me wonder if sci-fi exotic materials sufficient to make megastructures might actually be possible.
Old article, but still cool. I only know about physics from pulp sci-fi novels but the "Island of stability" makes me wonder if sci-fi exotic materials sufficient to make megastructures might actually be possible.
There's a theorized Continent of Stability somewhere well past mass number 300 (Oganesson, the current record densest element, has mass number 294). The Continent is a point where quark matter becomes stable and rather than quarks forming triplets and thus protons and neutrons, up and down quarks can flow freely. If it exists it's more stable than nuclear matter, so ultra-turbo-mega dense atoms would preferentially decay into quark matter instead of lighter elements. Because it's stable, quark matter wouldn't be able to decay back down into nuclear matter.