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noldig t1_itzm5gt wrote

Reply to comment by Ahandgesture in Would heavy unstable elements at the core of a star have a significantly extended half-life due to gravity? by SpectralMagic

Not completely, there is still neutron decay going on, but it is heavily surpressed because of electron degeneracy pressure, and balanced by electron capture

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Ahandgesture t1_itzmhnb wrote

Interesting, thank you for the answer! I wonder what the neutron lifetime in this case is. There's already the discrepancy between beamline and "jar" lifetime experiments. If we could measure neutron decay in a neutron star, we'd probably have another point of discrepancy 😆

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noldig t1_itzmxzz wrote

The lifetime will mostly depend on phase space and temperature, so two quantities a free neutron doesn't care about. But these processes are responsible for cooling neutron stars down so we try to measure it. I have computed the rate a few times but never converted the units haha I will check

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