Misplaced Pages

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by 87.116.149.25 (talk) at 13:57, 6 May 2007. 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 matterBuhaha. 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. For a more detailed discussion see the article on strange matter.

Possible observation

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 900 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.

Strangelets and the apocalypse

If strangelets exist and have negative electric charge then any strangelets produced by cosmic rays or in human-built accelerators could catalyze the conversion of large volumes of ordinary matter (such as the planet Earth) to strange matter. This possibility has received some media attention , but scientists have concluded that it is exceedingly unlikely.

Strangelets in Fiction

An episode of Odyssey 5 featured an attempt to destroy the planet by intentionally creating strangelets in a particle accelerator.

References

1. New Scientist, 28 August 1999: "A Black Hole Ate My Planet"
2. Horizon: End Days, an episode of the BBC television series Horizon

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
• The Story of Strangelets

This nuclear physics or atomic physics–related article is a stub. You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it.

• v
• t
• e

• Nuclear and atomic physics stubs
• Quark matter
• Nuclear physics