Neutron stars cast light on quark matter
(PHYSorg.com Space & Earth)

Quark matter - an extremely dense phase of matter made up of subatomic particles called quarks - may exist at the heart of neutron stars. It can also be created for brief moments in particle colliders on Earth, such as CERN`s Large Hadron Collider. But the collective behaviour of quark matter isn`t easy to pin down. In a colloquium this week at CERN, Aleksi Kurkela from CERN`s Theory department and the University of Stavanger, Norway, explained how neutron-star data have allowed him and his colleagues to place tight bounds on the collective behaviour of this extreme form of matter.