High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! A quark-nova is a hypothetical type of supernova that could occur if a neutron star spontaneously collapsed to become a quark star. The concept of quark-novae was suggested by Dr. Rachid Ouyed (University of Calgary, Canada) and Drs. Dey and Dey (Calcutta University, India). The quark-nova hypothesis has been mentioned in various publications When a neutron star spins down, it could convert to a quark star through a process known as quark deconfinement. The resultant star would have quark matter in its interior. The process would release immense amounts of energy, perhaps explaining the most energetic explosions in the universe; rough calculations have estimated that as much as 1047 joules of energy could be released from the phase transition inside a neutron star.[3] Quark-novae may be one cause of gamma ray bursts.