strong force of a nucleus

[Guest femaleengineer]

I have a question about the strong force of an atom's nucleus. I am an 8th grade student who is in love with science. A question was thrown my way asking what I think would happen if the strong force of an atom was very very strong. I said that protons of many atoms would attract and the opposite of the big bang theory would happen and all of the matter in the universe would form one huge atom with one huge nucleus. I then stated that usually atoms with that big of a nucleus, even with a strong force, were radioactive and would break apart. My teacher was quick to correct me and say that was not true. I am pretty naive on this subject, but I wanted to know what other people thought of this question.

 

What would happen if the strong force of a nucleus was 'super' strong?

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

It wouldn't be radioactive. Simple.

With big ones, it's too weak, so they break apart, and are radioactive.

[Crash]

your idea could be plauseable,or if they were super super strong they could impolde sorta black hole style

[Hades]

matter favors equilibrium; a molecule at that virtually implausible state would be immediately reduced to more stable conditions.

I will however state one subject i heard, that a certain celestial body of matter was composed, or believed to be, of entirely quarks. yes, quarks. Altho it is not a direct answer to your question, it is the same idea.

 

The forces that hold nuclei together are rather complicated. Protons and neutrons (both "nucleons") are held together by the "strong force", which tries to hold nucleons together whenever they are closer than about 10^-15 meters apart (0.000000000000001 meters). If any two protons and neutrons are further apart than this, they "can't see one another" with the short-range ties of the strong force. This is one of the things that limits the size of nuclei.

 

Also, notice that a nucleus with protons in it is positively charged. Since "like charges repel" electrically, any nucleus with protons in it will be trying to push itself apart via electrical forces.

 

Ultimately, it's the balance of these two forces that determines the allowed sizes of nuclei. The strong force is attractive and the electric force repulsive - there's only a limited range in which the strong force wins and can hold things together.

[Radical Edward]

Well the strong force is already incredibly strong. The thing is that it is a very short range force. The answer to this qustion is very much dependant on how strong you make it, or what range it has. The answer could vary from changing the stability of atoms, through to not allowing atoms (everything would just turn into neutron star matter) through to black holes and the destruction of everything (well, if anything could have existed in the first place).

 

Essentially one would have to tinker with the variables in the semi empirical mass formula to see what happens.

[Atlantic]

Nahh it can't happen, yes it will implode, and you can't establish proper electrostatic forces to hold it together. Gravity and Elecrostatic forces aren't the same.

Nice theory though

 

BTW: The big bang theory has been disproven the same number of times as Shlieman had pills (conservation of angular momentum with relation to space object's movement, and other interesting points.), but the problem is, no other solution has been proven therefore they ignorantly continue to publish big bang in the text books.