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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Twir (talk | contribs) at 17:31, 28 February 2007 (→Strangelets in Horizon: End Days: grammar edit and reference addition). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Strangelets are small fragments of strange matter. They only exist if the "strange matter hypothesis" is correct, in which case they are the true ground state of matter, and nuclei are actually metastable states with a very long lifetime.

Explanation

In May 2002, a group of researchers at Southern Methodist University reported the possibility that strange matter may have been responsible for two seismic events recorded on October 22 and November 24 in 1993; they proposed that two strangelets of unknown mass moving at roughly 400 km/s had passed through the Earth, generating seismic shock waves along their paths. The members of the group were Vidgor Teplitz, Eugene Herrin, David Anderson and Ileana Tibuleac. Most seismologists, however, consider the events to be normal deep earthquakes.

Strangelet 'observatory'

It has been suggested that the International Monitoring System being set up to verify the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) may be useful as a sort of "strangelet observatory" using the entire Earth as its detector; the IMS will be designed to detect anomalous seismic disturbances down to 1 kiloton of TNT's equivalent energy release or less, and could be able to track strangelets passing through Earth in real time if properly exploited.

For more information on strangelets, including a discussion of the possibility that strangelets might destroy the world, see the article on Strange matter.

Strangelets in Horizon: End Days

Horizon: End Days, an episode of the BBC television series Horizon, depicts a hypothetical scenario in which a test creating strangelets in a particle accelerator leads to the formation of a black hole. However, a number of scientists have rejected the possibility of such events because no particle accelerator powerful enough exists, and also because the tiny black holes created in them would be too small to form fully.

External links

• http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.02/matter.html
• http://www.msfc.nasa.gov/news/news/releases/2002/02-082.html
• http://user.web.cern.ch/Chronological/Announcements/CERNAnnouncements/2000/NewStateMatter/Story.html
• http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/astronomy/new_matter_020410.html
• SMU press release
• pre-print of SMU group paper
• BBC story reporting SMU group's work
• New Scientist: A Black Hole Ate My Planet

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