The Atlantis of stability

h/t sciencedaily: last Wednesday, the MA Institute of Technology reported some important new data on the Strong Fundamental Force at high energies and pressures. Well, okay, it was 1988-2012 data, from the now-decommissioned CLAS particle detector then running at MIT's Jefferson Laboratory; but newly recovered and mined. The thing is a thing that's a thing now.

Neutron stars are dense and faraway. Therefore we haven't a direct handle on what happens within them. We also hadn't developed - until recently - the instruments to test the fundamental forces at those temperatures and pressures. Instead the theoreticians had delivered a handwave over exotic (and untestable) "quark and gluon soup". G-d bless The King Over Soup!!

As far as I know, which isn't much, the "Strong" force exists to explain how electromagnetism (and the related "Weak" force) could be overcome in a nucleus. Why aren't neutrons drifting out of a nucleus, and why aren't protons pushing everything apart - in short, why isn't our whole universe a cloud of light hydrogen gas and occasional ions. Whatever's keeping nuclei together sure as f#$% isn't gravity.

Enter the Strong force: to attract protons and neutrons and, together, more protons. Also, said force explains why Hydrogen-2 (proton-neutron) is stable and next in line, Helium-3 (proton-proton-neutron); but not the bare double-protonic Helium-2. Elements with insufficient neutrons fall apart by fission - usually losing bundled proton-neutron coupled pairs, which squirt out as Helium-4 "alpha" ions. Hydrogen-4 and -up fall out of balance too, ejecting the new neutrons right back. Other atoms with too many neutrons undergo the Weak force which flips unprotected neutrons to protons in "beta" decay. Although here ... well, read on.

This model left us wondering about that delicate balance between the Electroweak and the Strong forces. Especially wherever we've added f#$%ing gravity, like in a pulsar. The neutrons don't decay there. Why not? And why aren't they collapsing further and raising up an event-horizon? Of course, some do, hence the black-holes; and Pauli Exclusion would stop collapse before that for some other borderline cases, but...

One possibility is that the "Strong" force isn't f#$%ing gravity. The force is more like electromagnetism: it can repel, also. Specifically, neutrons would repel each other. This is the "Argonne V18" model.

MIT have verified and constrained Argonne V18. It is hard to dispute 24 years of data. We're being told that protons repel each other as well, beyond what electromagnetic theory would explain.

I'm thinking this Argonne V18 understanding of neutron repulsion has implications for the massive transuranic atoms, notably unstable. Conjecture has Islands Of Stability out there whose isotopes aren't radioactive. I'm thinking these Islands don't exist.