“…If a neutron star were observed to cool slowly, on a timescale of order 1yr/T 4 9 , where T 9 is the core temperature in units of 10 9 K, this would be a clear sign of the core being composed of normal matter (a mixture of neutrons, protons, and electrons, with possible admixtures of other constituents), while if the neutron star were observed to cool rapidly, on a timescale of order 1min/T 4 9 , this would indicate that matter in the core was in an exotic state, such as quark matter, or a Bose condensate of pions or kaons. The reason for the very different timescales is that it was argued that in ordinary matter, the dominant neutrino emission process is the so-called modified Urca process, first discussed by Chiu and Salpeter [6], in which the two reactions n + n → n + p + e − +ν e and n + p + e − → n + n + ν e (1) occur in equal numbers. These reactions are just the usual processes of neutron beta decay and electron capture on protons,…”