I know that bosons are elemental particles that carry energy, but what does that mean? Are they containers that contain energy or catalysts with energy attached to them or are bosons themselves energy?

I went and reviewed the Wiki entry.

It's complicated . . .

Euphemism for breasts.

I could interject, because I know everything. But I'll let Alex explain this.

In all generality, Bosons are objects, usually particles, which do not adhere to the pauli exclusion principle. Fermions are the opposite category, because they do: No two of them which are of the same type, can be in the same physical state. This is why two Electrons, which are not Bosons , cannot occupy the same Energy level in an atom if they also have the same spin and angular momentum. It is also the reason why neutron stars do not collapse to black holes by themselves: neutrons are not bosons either. Photons are bosons, and therefore one can have a light beam of a fixed color of arbitrary intensity. You can cram as many photons of the same frequency in one bunch of light as you are willing to pay the electricity for.

I suspect that you do not (yet) care about this technical detail of Fermions vs. Bosons, and that your question is rather: what is an elementary particle. Am I correct?

I am not sure elementary particles conform to colloquial notion of "objects".

(September 11, 2015 at 12:03 pm)Alex K Wrote: It is also the reason why neutron stars do not collapse to black holes by themselves: neutrons are not bosons either.

I was under the impression that the reason for that was that neutron stars lacked sufficient mass (and therefore gravity) to overcome the neutron degeneracy pressure. Or is that a related concept?

(September 11, 2015 at 12:35 pm)Cthulhu Dreaming Wrote:

(September 11, 2015 at 12:03 pm)Alex K Wrote: It is also the reason why neutron stars do not collapse to black holes by themselves: neutrons are not bosons either.

I was under the impression that the reason for that was that neutron stars lacked sufficient mass (and therefore gravity) to overcome the neutron degeneracy pressure.  Or is that a related concept?

Indeed it is!
Degeneracy denotes the situation when all lowest energy physical states are occupied by a neutron, and hence blocked for others, and when compressing the star further one reduces the number of possible low energy states and thud forces some of them to occupy higher energy levels because only one neutron per state is allowed, and the low energy states are all taken. So compression forces some neutrons into higher energy states, and Energy increase divided by compression volume is more or less the degeneracy pressure.

Oh, I thought you said bosoms.

Do neutrons become bosons if you add more mass to the neutron star until it exceeds the Landau Oppenheimer volkoff limit?