Where do all the protons go

after the formation of a neutron star? They are composed almost entirely of neutron, and as far as I know unpaired neutrons are very rare. But that's the problem, I don't know. So how do we wind up with giant pieces of mass that are as dense as the center of an atom and made up of almost nothing but neutrons?

 

it would appear that unpaired neutrons arent as uncommon as i originally thought, which brings me no closer to answering the question but makes the task considerably less daunting

 

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They're all sitting in the Atlanta airport waiting to make their connection ... lol.

I asked this question of an astronomer friend of mine, brazenly pretending that I understood what it was all about.

This is what she said ... when a star collapses, the internal pressure becomes so great that the protons and electrons are forced to combine together to form neutrons. That's where the neutrons come from in the neutron star

 

meh...I'm not too keen on modern science with terminology.

as far as I'm concerned, there are only three things: north pole, south pole, and neutral particles.

 

I remember learning that a neutron is essentially a proton with an electron stuck to it. Charge cancels out, mass is nearly equivalent...seems to make sense, but I don't know if that was just some theory my HS teacher came up with.

 

Lone neutrons do not exist in nature as they are unstable. Their decay time at rest is a few hundred seconds (800ish). this is actually very long in terms of particle physics, only the proton and electron live longer (they are totally stable as far as we know). They exist in nuclei as the constant interactions with protons keeps them from disappearing. In a neutron star the matter is so dense that electrons and protons undergo inverse beta decay, where a proton and an electron interact to give a neutron and neutrino. The neutrino disappears into space, the neutrons bind with the other neutrons in the nuclei. Eventually you have a body composed solely of neutrons.