Strangelet
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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.
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.
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.
[edit] 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
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