Browsing through astro-ph today I found a curious title: “The Shear Viscosity and Thermal Conductivity of Nuclear Pasta”. Nuclear pasta, really?
At intermediate densities, around 1014 g/cm3 just below nuclear density, matter may form complex nuclear pasta phases. Competition between short range attractive nuclear, and long range repulsive Coulomb, interactions can lead to clusters with many different non-spherical shapes including long rods or flat plates. Because pasta may form at high densities, it could represent as much as half the mass of the neutron star crust. The complex shapes in nuclear pasta have sizes of tens of Fermis [10-15 meters, about the size scale of atomic nuclei].
The article is just full of great quotes; “Semiclassical nuclear pasta model”; “The complex physics of frustration”‘; “[the model] can describe nuclear pasta in a flexible way”. Plus the physics is absolutely wild.
—cts