Month: September 2022

THE WORST PLAGUE. “A fleck of strange matter traveling fast enough could enter a star or a planet, changing it from the inside out, growing like a bacterial culture that continues to eat. This is one of the most sensational pictures of Earth’s death: the planet struck by and devoured by an unstoppable flood of strange matter. It’s the reason some call strange matter “the most dangerous substance in the universe”. https://lnkd.in/dj52j3n View in LinkedIn

I simply cannot resist these vestiges of times past living in time present and projected into time future. View in LinkedIn

Extraordinary View in LinkedIn

CANCEROUS MATTER. “What would need to happen for these strange matter flecks — known somewhat endearingly as strangelets — to metastasize within a planet?” https://lnkd.in/dj52j3n View in LinkedIn

KRYPTONITE CHARGE. “Any strangelets existing on Earth would have to be microscopic, having a radius of only a few hundred femtometers. Larger pieces would be too heavy to rest on top of the planet’s crust and would instead sink to the core. The reason strangelets would be allowed to rest on the crust without consuming it is because strange matter is thought to have a positive charge. Matter on Earth also has a positive charge. Thus, they would repel one another.” https://lnkd.in/dj52j3n View in LinkedIn

CHANGE OF STATE. “Stable atomic nuclei have zero strangeness. However, at sufficiently high density, above normal nuclear density no~0.15fm-(po=2.5X10(14) gcm) matter is expected to undergo some kind of transition from a state where quarks are localized (confined) inside baryons to a deconfined state of homogeneous quark plasma.” (Strange Matter and Neutron Stars by Pawe Y HAENSEL, Poland, 1987) View in LinkedIn

PROTECTIVE BARRIERS. “There are only two ways strange matter could eat away our world: it could be negatively charged (most scientists don’t believe this to be the case), or it could overcome the Coulomb barrier with enough kinetic energy. The Coulomb barrier is the repulsion that would prevent the positive strange matter particles and the positive Earth matter particles from interacting with one another.” https://lnkd.in/dj52j3n View in LinkedIn

COSMIC FOSSILS. “Dissecting strange matter is like digging up a fossil and brushing it off in the hopes that it will help us understand events that took place long before we came to exist. It not only fills in gaps with the history of the cosmos, but also informs us as to what happens at the core of the universe’s strangest stars.” https://lnkd.in/dj52j3n View in LinkedIn

QUARKS RUNNING AMOK. “Strange matter, as scientists call it, is unarguably weird. It's unlike any matter on Earth. For one, it's heavier than our matter, but that's just the beginning. Our beloved matter is organized. It's made of atoms, which contain nuclei packed with protons and neutrons. Indeed, our quarks, which are basic particles, stay neatly packaged inside the protons and neutrons. But in strange matter, there are no boundaries; it's just a lump in which the quarks run amok, roaming top to bottom and end to end.” https://lnkd.in/dx-2fEu View in LinkedIn