A quark star — if it actually exists — would happen if somehow you could collapse the neutron star even further. Not so far that it becomes a black hole, but into an intermediary stage.

This neutron star is too small for conventional explanation, but it could be a "strange star" with a quark core, previously only in the realm of theoretical physics.

While astrophysicists continue to debate quark stars' existence, a team of physicists has found that the remnant of a neutron star merger observed in 2019 has just the right mass to be one of ...

Astrophysicists have found evidence of quark matter at the heart of compact stars. Combining recent theoretical calculations with astrophysical observations, the researchers found that the most ...

For example, scientists using data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory reported that the nearby neutron-star candidate RX J1856.5–3754 has an X-ray spectrum consistent with a source whose ...

The universe may contain extremely dense and exotic hypothetical cosmic objects known as strange quark stars. While astrophysicists continue to debate quark stars' existence, a team of physicists has ...

During a neutron-star merger, the stars rapidly change shape and heat up, causing changes in the state of matter inside them. The merger may also produce quark matter, where the elementary ...