Tareeiri (star)

Tareeiri is a neutron star in the Ruupiin Sector of the Two Thousand Worlds responsible for some instances of new star formation in the immediate vicinity of the world Kirur and ultimately responsible for the dominance of Kirur-form life on colony worlds in the region.

Description

The neutron star Tareeiri formed when a preceding supergiant star experienced a loss of outward pressure from thermonuclear burning caused when the fusion of heavy elements reaches the production of iron nuclei. When sufficient iron build up occurs within the central core absorbing heat non-productively from the surrounding thermonuclear reactions, the reaction rates of the core decrease with an accompanying decrease in outward pressure. This in turn causes the outer layers of the supergiant to collapse and gravitationally compress, greatly increasing both pressure and temperature. Under normal circumstances core temperatures would increase to the point at which iron would begin to fuse into heavier elements, except that the temperatures reached are so high that the iron nuclei become unstable and instead begin to photodissociate or fission, leading to a further loss of outward pressure at the core and the collapse of the core into a degenerate mass that is too high for electron degeneracy pressure alone to support.

The energy levels involved favor driving a reverse beta-decay reaction in which the protons and electrons of the degenerate matter are transmuted into neutrons via the weak nuclear force, generating neutrinos as a by-product, the density of the degenerate matter increasing from 1.0 tonne per cm³ to ~ 1.0 billion tonnes per cm³ with a corresponding sudden decrease in radius. With the sudden total loss of outward pressure the outer layers of the supergiant collapse onto this non-compressible object and rebound, sending a shockwave thru the outer layers of the supergiant structure that disrupt it and blow it away at a speed of approximately 0.1c with corresponding intense lightspeed gamma-ray emission, and secondary lightspeed X-ray, and UV-ray emission associated with the plasma wavefront following behind at one-tenth lightspeed.

History and Background

The supernova remnant Tareeiri formed at or near Ruupiin 0920 approximately 3 million years ago when its preceding supergiant form went supernova, causing an outwardly expanding lightspeed wake of interstellar sterilization followed by a 0.1c wake of plasma generating significant lightspeed radiation, ultimately known as the Tareeiri Waste, or Tareeirii, in Thirty Subsector of Ruupiin Sector. As Tareeiri has a high proper motion relative to Kirur and other members of the local star cluster (implying that it is most likely an interloper in the region), it has long since passed out of hexgrid Ruupiin 0920 and has moved out of the region of the Tareeiri Waste, though it is still relatively close by astrographically.

References

This list of sources was used by the Traveller Wiki Editorial Team and individual contributors to compose this article. Copyrighted material is used under license from Mongoose Publishing or by permission of the author. The page history lists all of the contributions.

• J. Andrew Keith, Loren Wiseman. K'kree (Game Designers Workshop, 1984), .
• Andy Slack, David Thomas, David L. Pulver. Alien Races 2 (Steve Jackson Games, 1999), .
• Martin Dougherty. Aliens of Charted Space 1 (Mongoose Publishing, 2020), .
• Contributor: User:WHULorigan