On 12/23/2012 03:27 PM, Warren Smith wrote:
... The problem is, neutrons are unstable. Neutron has a mean life of 15 minutes for decay into proton+electron+antineutrino+energy. The energy release for decay of a free neutron is 782 KeV (which is about 1/1201 fraction of its rest-mass energy) but for neutrons in different atomic nuclei it can differ, sometimes being as large as 1.5MeV (?).
... and sometimes being a small as 0. Or even less, in fact. For example, when you add a neutron to (stable) Helium-3, you get the significantly more stable Helium-4 nucleus. I'm not giving "neutronium" a free pass here; I agree its existence is dubious. But I don't think you can use the energetics of the free neutron to argue about the properties of a highly-bound highly-multiparticle sea of quarks.