Starbuster by Strange Matter (2024)

FAQs

Has strange matter been found? ›

Debate about the strange matter hypothesis

The strange matter hypothesis remains unproven. No direct search for strangelets in cosmic rays or particle accelerators has yet confirmed a strangelet.

If strange matter, which is incredibly dense and stable, were to encounter a black hole, theoretical predictions suggest it might be absorbed. The interaction's specifics, such as whether strange matter could alter the black hole's properties, remain a topic of speculation among physicists.

Dark matter is a form of matter thought to account for approximately 85% of the matter in the universe and strange matter is hypothesized to occur in the core of neutron stars, or, more speculatively, as isolated droplets that may vary in size from femtometers to kilometers.

In the grand scheme of space, strangelets are small and unnoticeable. But we'd certainly know all about it if even just one arrived on Earth. It could theoretically move through our planet, converting (and naturally condensing) everything before it, leaving our world much smaller than it was and totally without life.

Touching strange matter could be catastrophic. Strange matter is a hypothetical form of quark matter, composed of strange quarks. If it exists and you were to touch it, the interaction between ordinary matter (like your body) and strange matter could potentially trigger a process called “strangelet conversion.”

In fact, researchers have been able to infer the existence of dark matter only from the gravitational effect it seems to have on visible matter. Dark matter seems to outweigh visible matter roughly six to one, making up about 27% of the universe.

Your body stretches out, not uncomfortably at first, but over time, the stretching will become more severe. Astronomers call this spaghettification because the intense gravitational field pulls you into a long, thin piece of spaghetti. When you start feeling pain depends on the size of the black hole.

According to Einstein's theory, time and space, in a way, trade places inside the hole. Inside the black hole, the flow of time itself draws falling objects into the center of the black hole. No force in the universe can stop this fall, any more than we can stop the flow of time.

Earth is not just tucked into a planet-size black hole or even one the size of the solar system. If that were the case, scientists would have noticed, Field told Live Science. There would be observable signatures of the black hole's spinning.

Yes, it's been made in particle accelerators often. Since Strange matter is just normal matter with a Strange quark in it rather than the typical Up and Down quarks, it's easy to produce but not very stable. Strange quarks show up both in the form of Hadrons and Mesons, just like regular quarks do.

Is there antimatter on Earth? ›

Small amounts of antimatter constantly rain down on the Earth in the form of cosmic rays, energetic particles from space. These antimatter particles reach our atmosphere at a rate ranging from less than one per square meter to more than 100 per square meter.

For the past 50 years and more, laboratories like CERN have routinely produced antiparticles, and in 1995 CERN became the first laboratory to create anti-atoms artificially. But no one has ever produced antimatter without also obtaining the corresponding matter particles.

Interestingly enough, nothing interesting. Since antimatter is exactly the opposite of matter (for example, a positron has a positive charge and the same mass as an electron), the universe would have been exactly as it is now and we wouldn't even have been able to tell the difference.

A quark star is a hypothetical type of compact, exotic star, where extremely high core temperature and pressure have forced nuclear particles to form quark matter, a continuous state of matter consisting of free quarks.

Extensive analysis of data gathered almost 20 years ago has led to a surprising discovery: that strange matter can be formed when a single photon is absorbed simultaneously by two quarks.

Researchers just detected dark matter on the cosmic web for the first time. Using a technique known as gravitational lensing, the team was able to detect the presence of dark matter even though we can't see it, further confirming a long-held theory about the superstructure of our universe.

Although no particles are known to have negative mass, physicists (primarily Hermann Bondi in 1957, William B. Bonnor in 1964 and 1989, then Robert L. Forward) have been able to describe some of the anticipated properties such particles may have.

The first strange particle (a particle containing a strange quark) was discovered in 1947 (kaons), but the existence of the strange quark itself (and that of the up and down quarks) was only postulated in 1964 by Murray Gell-Mann and George Zweig to explain the eightfold way classification scheme of hadrons.

Scientists thus discovered some of the Universe's missing baryons, thereby confirming that 80–90% of normal matter is located outside of galaxies, an observation that will help expand models for the evolution of galaxies.