The Hardest Material in the Universe

Added: 2026-05-21

[00:00:00]The surface itself isn't what you'd imagine. It's not molten lava. It's not gas.

[00:00:05]The outer crust of a neutron star is thought to be a lattice of incredibly dense atomic nuclei, almost like a crystalline shell, harder than any material that exists anywhere in the known universe. And beneath that crust, we're not entirely sure. Some theories suggest a soup of free neutrons. Others suggest [music] exotic states of matter that don't even have names yet, things like strange quark matter or a superfluid neutron core.

[00:00:30]Physics as we understand it begins to break down.