Earth punctured by tiny cosmic missiles

[dr. what]

Why are you guys looking at me like that for?.....

FORGET dangers from giant meteors: Earth is facing another threat from outer space. Scientists have come to the conclusion that two mysterious explosions in the 1990s were caused by bizarre cosmic missiles.

The two objects were picked up by earthquake detectors as they tore through Earth at up to 900,000 mph. According to scientists, the most plausible explanation is that they were "strangelets", clumps of matter that have so far defied detection but whose existence was posited 20 years ago.

Formed in the Big Bang and inside extremely dense stars, strangelets are thought to be made from quarks - the subatomic particles found inside protons and neutrons. Unlike ordinary matter, however, they also contain "strange quarks", particles normally only seen in high-energy accelerators.

Strangelets - sometimes also called strange-quark nuggets - are predicted to have many unusual properties, including a density about ten million million times greater than lead. Just a single pollen-size fragment is believed to weigh several tons.

They are thought to be extremely stable, travelling through the galaxy at speeds of about a million miles per hour. Until now, all attempts to detect them have failed. A team of American scientists believes, however, that it may have found the first hard evidence for the existence of strangelets, after scouring earthquake records for signs of their impact with Earth.

The team, from the Southern Methodist University in Texas, analysed more than a million earthquake reports, looking for the tell-tale signal of strangelets hitting Earth.

While their very high speed gives strangelets a huge amount of energy their tiny size suggests that any effects might be extremely localised, and there is unlikely to be a blast big enough to have widespread effects on the surface.

The scientists looked for events producing two sharp signals, one as it entered Earth, the other as it emerged again. They found two such events, both in 1993. The first was on the morning of October 22. Seismometers in Turkey and Bolivia recorded a violent event in Antarctica that packed the punch of several thousand tons of TNT. The disturbance then ripped through Earth on a route that ended with it exiting through the floor of the Indian Ocean off Sri Lanka just 26 seconds later - implying a speed of 900,000 mph.

The second event took place on November 24, when sensors in Australia and Bolivia picked up an explosion starting in the Pacific south of the Pitcairn Islands and travelling through Earth to appear in Antarctica 19 seconds later.

According to the scientists, both events are consistent with an impact with strangelets at cosmic speeds. In a report about to be submitted to the Seismological Society of America, the team of geologists and physicists concludes: "The only explanation for such events of which we are aware is passage through the earth of ton-sized strange-quark nuggets."

Professor Eugene Herrin, a member of the team, said that two strangelets just one-tenth the breadth of a hair would account for the observations. "These things are extremely dense and travel at 40 times the speed of sound straight through the Earth - they'd hardly slow down as they went through."

The good news is that, despite their force, the impact of strangelets on an inhabited area would, probably, be less violent than that of a meteor. Prof Herrin said: "It's very hard to determine what the effect would be. There would probably be a tiny crater but it would be virtually impossible to find anything."

Scientists say that the discovery of strangelets would be a significant breakthrough, solving several long-standing mysteries. These include the nature of "dark matter", which, astronomers say, makes up more than 90 per cent of our galaxy. With their high density and stability, strangelets may account for much of this invisible matter.

Prof Frank Close, a particle physicist at Oxford University, said that confirmation of the events was crucial. "The first step is to see if one can find more examples and eliminate all other interpretations," he said. "If you're looking for very exotic and rare events, you need to be able to tell if it's the real thing or just an artefact."

According to Prof Herrin, the two events agree with predictions for strangelet impacts, which are expected to occur about once a year. He added, however, that finding more would be difficult, as seismic databases now automatically remove all signals not linked to earthquakes. He said: "To find more events we need to get at the data before that happens."

[Companion Cube]

Rods from God, indeed.

[Quadlok]

Great, one more thing to worry about.

I hadn't heard about these things before. How is it that such a strange form of matter could remain stable outside of the interior of a star?

[wautd]

Damn scientists. Lets burn down the observatory so it'll never happen again!!!

[Thinkmarble]

At the moment, the world is not known to be a very strange place. But the possibility of a strange Universe has not been ruled out. This strangeness could occur at many levels, from forming heavier than usual isotopes of common elements, to larger strange `nuggets,' to entire stars composed largely of strange matter. I outline the ways in which strangeness may occur, the possible mechanisms for the formation of strange matter, and current searches for the various forms.

Go here

[outcast]

At the moment, the world is not known to be a very strange place. trange/strange.html]here[/url]

Obviously they've never had contact with Humans.

[Admiral Valdemar]

There was a docu-drama on BBC3 not long ago called End:Day which was basically a single day repeated with five different catastrophes occurring each time from a virus pandemic to that lump of rock off Africa falling into the ocean. The last, and most implausible (as in the scientists said it makes great sci-fi, but is pretty much impossible, like winning the lottery several weeks in a row) was a particle accelerator creating strangelets. A bit like a black hole, only a 21st century version, they ate the entire planet because they're, uh, strange.

Though I never really looked into their properties, kept confusing them with superstrings for some reason. Now I think about it, they'd be great weapons if you could harness them somehow. Forget railguns throwing solid metal slugs or hypervelocity missiles. Get a few particles of strange matter and fling them in enough volume to cut anything you want with raw KE.

I doubt Bruce Willis could save us if a larger clump of these things hit, say, a city of London/NYC/Tokyo size.

[CmdrWilkens]

Well for starters it sounds like a good day for the people who posited the existence of these things and for those already panicing (or not) it doesn't sound that bad as the effects while big don't sound like they'd be all that more disastrous than a middling sized earthquake. Now admittedly that is nothing to scoff at but its far from end of the world type destruction.

[Zero]

*stares up at the sky in fear* What would happen if one of these hit me on the head?

Seriously, though, that is pretty awesome.

[Zed Snardbody]

*stares up at the sky in fear* What would happen if one of these hit me on the head?

Seriously, though, that is pretty awesome.

Dead three times over before you even hit the ground.

Great....now you've got me doing it to. I need my tin foil hat.

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

There was a docu-drama on BBC3 not long ago called End:Day which was basically a single day repeated with five different catastrophes occurring each time from a virus pandemic to that lump of rock off Africa falling into the ocean. The last, and most implausible (as in the scientists said it makes great sci-fi, but is pretty much impossible, like winning the lottery several weeks in a row) was a particle accelerator creating strangelets. A bit like a black hole, only a 21st century version, they ate the entire planet because they're, uh, strange.

Though I never really looked into their properties, kept confusing them with superstrings for some reason. Now I think about it, they'd be great weapons if you could harness them somehow. Forget railguns throwing solid metal slugs or hypervelocity missiles. Get a few particles of strange matter and fling them in enough volume to cut anything you want with raw KE.

I doubt Bruce Willis could save us if a larger clump of these things hit, say, a city of London/NYC/Tokyo size.

Strangelets would make for fantastic weapons, provided you don't make them negatively charged. (Negatively charged strangelets will convert all ordinary matter in reach into one enormous negatively-charged strangelet. Fortunately, negative strangelets seem to be very difficult to make, and small strangelets are ridiculously unstable.) Even positively charged strangelets will fuse with low-mass ordinary matter (Neutrons, preferrably, and the reaction releases much more energy than mundane nuclear fusion. (This would make for a fantastically compact reactor. Though the strangelet pellets would be fantastically dense, and you'd not want to put this contraption anywhere near a planet, since the core would likely sink straight through the crust, and go on sinking until it reached the center of the planet. It would also make for a fantastic bomb, provided you had convenient source of neutrons nearby. Even helium atoms would work.)

Source 1

Source 2

[Zero]

Could you use strange matter to destroy the sun?

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

Could you use strange matter to destroy the sun?

Not likely. A stable strangelet would pass through the Sun in approximately one hour. The mean density of a stable strangelet is 10,000,000 times that of lead. The mean density of the core of the Sun is merely 150 times that of lead. The average density of the entire Sun is roughly an eighth that of lead.

The short version of this is that, to the strangelet, passing through the Sun would be rather like passing through mostly empty space. It may encounter the odd neutron or high-energy atomic nuclei here and there and incorporate it into the strangelet, but the end result will be a slightly heavier strangelet and a slightly lighter and hotter Sun (strangelet-hadron fusion is an exothermic reaction, if you will recall.)

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

Err, the density at the core of the Sun is 150 gm/cm^3, making it only ten times denser than lead. My fault.

[Admiral Valdemar]

Curious. The fictional scenario in that programme mentioned was obviously about a stable -ve strangelet given it looked very much like a black hole growing in the Earth (I guess no one really knows what a mass of strangelets that are now where the continental US once where looks like). Using their sheer density is one thing, but if they really could be made this way and, again, somehow fired, you'd have something roughly like the matter disruption weapons of sci-fi such as the Galaxy Gun missiles or phasers. I assume that, given they require a decent amount of mass to interact with, that they'd stop once hard vacuum was reached. Though having them floating around, letalone with some velocity, would be dangerous if you couldn't contain them.

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

Curious. The fictional scenario in that programme mentioned was obviously about a stable -ve strangelet given it looked very much like a black hole growing in the Earth (I guess no one really knows what a mass of strangelets that are now where the continental US once where looks like). Using their sheer density is one thing, but if they really could be made this way and, again, somehow fired, you'd have something roughly like the matter disruption weapons of sci-fi such as the Galaxy Gun missiles or phasers. I assume that, given they require a decent amount of mass to interact with, that they'd stop once hard vacuum was reached. Though having them floating around, letalone with some velocity, would be dangerous if you couldn't contain them.

Strangelets apparently become more stable as you incorporate mass within them. Produce a negatively charged strangelet in a supercollider, and it won't be very large. It will probably decay within nanoseconds. However, as the scenario goes, the strangelet ventures far enough in its short lifetime to encounter an atom and gobble it up.

However, the rub appears to be, that as a strangelet grows larger, it eventually becomes positive, due to depletion of negative charge(1) as the thing swallows up postively charged protons. Positively charged strangelets are dangerous only to neutrons and nuclei with sufficient energy to overcome the strangelet's charge barrier.

So the scenario would play out as follows:

1) A negatively charged strangelet forms and is imparted with enough energy to zip into the normal matter of the containment vessel.

2) The strangelet grows with each atom absorbed. However, as it is fantastically dense, it will eventually fall out the bottom of the supercollider, hit the ground beneath it and start sinking. Then it will go on sinking until it reaches the core of the Earth.

3) At some point in its journey down, it will become positively charged and effectively inert . . . only gobbling the odd neutron (the products of this interaction would be a heavier strangelet, some gamma rays, and an electron from beta decay.)

Essentially, the only use a strangelet would have as a weapon is a KE weapon. And even then, not a very useful one, as you could only use it to punch small holes in your target. (Mind you, as a strangelet the size of a speck of dust would mass several tons, you could have a nigh-on-undetectable projectile that could be imparted wtih fantastic amounts of KE.) The problem here becomes one of overpenetration. You're likely to put those small holes clean through your target. Though, if you put enough small holes in a target, you're bound to hit
something important sooner or later.

[HyperionX]

I believe I've mentioned this before, and that strangelets make a very good candidate for "neutronium" armor. So this thing's a lot better playing defense that as a weapon.

[Admiral Valdemar]

That's kind've why I considered firing them en masse to cut objects up rather than act as a simple anti-armour weapon. But using them as armour? Interesting.

[HyperionX]

Crazy thought experiment (realistic?): If these things actually because positively charged after reaching a certain size then they will become nothing more than atomic nucleus for all intent and purposes, however with the neat ability of having fractional electrical charges and possibly being much larger than what is stable for normal nuclei.

So I don't see any doomsday scenario from strangelets, and quite possibly they end up being relatively mundane and we can encounter these things without even realizing it. However, if we can somehow aquire large quantities of strangelets we can make some pretty crazy substances. I mean imagine what can we make if we had atoms with fractal atomic numbers and/or huge atomic numbers Gotta be pretty neat in its own right.

[LadyTevar]

Out of Left Field: Could this be what caused that huge explosion in the middle of Siberia back in the 1900s?

[Admiral Valdemar]

No. That was, and always has been, a space rock detonating over the site at several klicks a second and about several klicks height. Had it been a strangelet, it'd go right through the planet with little real disruption.

[Einhander Sn0m4n]

Another Out-of-Left-Fielder: Is it possible there are strangelets at the very center of Earth's core? Maybe one hit Earth slowly enough to be captured...

[Illuminatus Primus]

There was a docu-drama on BBC3 not long ago called End:Day which was basically a single day repeated with five different catastrophes occurring each time from a virus pandemic to that lump of rock off Africa falling into the ocean. The last, and most implausible (as in the scientists said it makes great sci-fi, but is pretty much impossible, like winning the lottery several weeks in a row) was a particle accelerator creating strangelets. A bit like a black hole, only a 21st century version, they ate the entire planet because they're, uh, strange.

Though I never really looked into their properties, kept confusing them with superstrings for some reason. Now I think about it, they'd be great weapons if you could harness them somehow. Forget railguns throwing solid metal slugs or hypervelocity missiles. Get a few particles of strange matter and fling them in enough volume to cut anything you want with raw KE.

I doubt Bruce Willis could save us if a larger clump of these things hit, say, a city of London/NYC/Tokyo size.

You're really into faddish sci-fi weapon concepts. This obviously is unworkable because of how damn penetrative the things are. They just punch clean through everything.

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

Another Out-of-Left-Fielder: Is it possible there are strangelets at the very center of Earth's core? Maybe one hit Earth slowly enough to be captured...

It's possible, just very, very unlikely. Most of these postulated stable strangelets would be moving very fast, are superdense, and are mostly inert. They'd punch through a planet like Earth with nary a second thought. Even a Jupiter wouldn't slow them down very much. A series of gravitational encounters with stars might slow one down enough so that it drifts through space at a slow enough velocity that it could concievably be captured by Earth, and spiral down to impact.

Of course, the odds of such a series of encounters is, by itself, vanishingly small. But it could happen. Wouldn't matter much if it did. You'd have this lump of inert, super-dense matter sitting at the center of the Earth. It wouldn't affect anything, and you wouldn't even be able to find it, unless you had a Death Star handy to blow up the planet. Of course, something armored with neutronium might have something to worry about from a stranglet, but that's another story and another forum.

[Admiral Valdemar]

You're really into faddish sci-fi weapon concepts. This obviously is unworkable because of how damn penetrative the things are. They just punch clean through everything.

No, I'm not into "faddish sci-fi weapon concepts" given I like hard sci-fi more than anything (which this wouldn't be a part of given the exotic nature of even acquiring such particles), enjoy that generalisation. But if you think a stream of these things punching through in a cutting arc would do little damage, think again. Because that is what I was suggesting; better than typical railgun concepts.

But since the technology to create such particles en masse and stable is a wee bit off, this is all hyperbole anyway.