Do we really understand neutron star pairs or even neutron stars?

The observation of gravitational radiation by LIGO allowing interpretation as fusion of two neutron stars has challenged the views about neutrons stars and star formation: see the popular article in Quanta Magazine about the work of Enrico Ramirez-Ruiz and colleagues. Single neutron star collision with exceptional characteristics as such is not enough for revolution. One can however ask what it could mean if this event is not a rare statistical fluctuation but business as usual.

1. The pair has too high total mass: only 10 per cent of stars are estimated to be massive enough to make so massive neutron stars. Something in the models for star formation might be badly wrong.
   
   
2. Also the models for the formation of neutron star pairs are unable to explain why the abundance of so massive pairs would be so high as LIGO would predict. There could be something wrong also in the models for the collisions of stellar objects.
   
   

TGD provides several new physics elements to the possible model.

1. Galaxies, stars, even planets are tangles in cosmic strings carrying dark energy and (also galactic) dark matter and thickened to monopole flux tubes not possible in standard gauge theories. This leads to a general model of stars and of final states of stars as flux tube tangles as spaghettis filling the volume and thus maximally dense. One obtains nice quantitative predictions plus a generalization of the notion of blackhole like entity (BHE) so that all final states of stars are BHEs: BHEs would be characterizized by the quantized thickness of the flux tube in question.
   

   Also a TGD based modification of the view about nuclear fusion required by a 10 year old nuclear physics anomaly and "cold fusion" is involved solving a long list of nuclear physics related anomalies (see this).
   
   

2. Collision of stellar objects producing blackholes can occur much more often than expected. Suppose one has two long flux tube portions going very near to each other: they could be portions of the same closed flux tube or of two separate flux tubes. The situation would be this for instance in galactic nuclei of spiral galaxies (see this.
   

   The colliding stellar objects correspond to flux tube tangles moving along them. Since the stellar objects are forced to move along these cosmic highways, their collisions as cosmic traffic accidents become much more frequent than for randomly moving objects in ordinary cosmology. The cosmic highways force them to come near to each other at crossings and gravitational attraction strengthens this tendency.
   

   Situation would be analogous in bio-chemistry: bio-catalysis would involve flux tubes connecting reactants and the reduction of effective Planck constants would reduce flux tube length and bring the reactants together and liberating the energy to overcome the potential wall making reaction extremely slow in ordinary chemistry.
   

   Already the high rate of collisions might allow to understand why the first collision of neutron stars observed by LIGO was that for unexpectedly high total mass.
   
   

This model does not yet answer the question why so heavy neutron stars are possible at all. Also the fusion of "too heavy" blackholes has been observed by LIGO (for TGD inspired comments see this). Thus the blackhole formation of a neutron star pair with unexpectedly high combined mass supports the expecation that "too" heavy stars are a rule rather than exception.

1. The problem is that during the formation of blackhole or neutron the radius of the star decreases and the star should throw out a lot of angular momentum to avoid too high spinning velocity in the collapse. This can be achieved by throwing out mass but this makes heavy blackholes and neutron stars impossible.
   
   
2. Can TGD provide a solution of this problem? Suppose that both galaxies and stars are tangles along long cosmic strings locally thickened to monopole flux tubes carrying dark matter and energy in TGD sense Long flux tube would provide new degrees of freedom. Could the angular momentum of collapsing star consisting of ordinary matter be transferred from the star to the cosmic string/flux tube without large loss of stellar mass.
   

   Suppose that one has single monopole flux tube or a pair of monopole flux tubes as analog of DNA double strand (flux tubes would combine to form a closed flux tube) forming a rotating helical structure. This structure could store the angular momentum to its rotation. Also the radiation and particles travelling around these helical flux tubes could take away part of the angular momentum but flux tubes themselves as TGD counterparts of galactic dark matter could do the main job. Heavy blackholes would be a direct signature for energy and angular mmentum transfer between ordinary matter and galactic dark matter in TGD sense.
   
   
   

See the article LIGO and TGD or the chapter with the same title.

For a summary of earlier postings see Latest progress in TGD.

Articles and other material related to TGD.