Odysseus wrote:


Consider neutron stars, which are much less dense than black holes,
but even they no longer have any atomic structure. They're thought to
be made of 'degenerate' matter, sometimes called "neutronium", in
which all the empty space has been squeezed out of the atoms, fusing
the protons and electrons into what's in effect a gigantic nucleus.


This has been my thinking as well. Going only by the laymans
explainations, I'd thought it similar to the newly witnessed
'Bose-Einsteinian Condensates'. Similar in that as a whole mass, it's
makeup is bound as one piece, if that makes any sense.

Were you perhaps thinking of Kepler, who (beside his more famous
astronomical work) did some research into polyhedra, IIANM
discovering a number of stellated forms?


I did some research on this and I don't think it's Kepler but more like
Archimedes or Euclid (or any of the other hundred or so geometers of the
past).