I'm always fascinated by the sheer and unfathomable amounts of energy that is thrown around in these events. Just thinking about the fact that a single spoonful of neutron star matter contains more mass than Mount Everest fills me with wonder about the world we live in.
What happens whena tablespoon of neutron soup gets thrown out of the well of a neutron star? Does it suddenly expand to the size of everest? Where do the electrons come from?
In terms of "where do the electrons come from", an ordinary neutron in free space has a half-life of about 10 minutes, decaying through beta decay which produces a proton, an electron and a neutrino.
That sounds fairly energetic... So after 10min you'd have some odd mix of heavy elements probably approaching a decent fraction of the volume of everest. Half the volume of everest x (densityofgranite / densityoflead)
That kind of expansion rate has to rival any explosion imaginable.
It's essentially a giant atomic nucleus, so absent a star's worth of gravity holding it together it's going to decay rapidly into stable isotopes. So essentially it would act more or less the same as a huge fission bomb of the same mass.
I'd imagine some of the energy and degenerate matter consisting of neutrons would convert to protons and electrons, and nucleosynthesis would take place to form elements.
I have no idea, though, but I'm pretty sure I watched a video about this.
