Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Do Strangelets Pass Through Earth?

Posted by timothy on from the particles-of-truth dept.

Weirdolet writes: "Ananova are reporting that ultra-dense, pollen sized strangelets (aka nuggets of strange quarks) travelling at 900,000 miles per hour hit the earth, violently pass through it and have done on at least two occasions already. It's also reported, allegedly, in the Sunday telegraph but I haven't found it there yet :P Coming to a particle accelerator near you soon ... ?" Another reader has found the story at the Telegraph.

161 of 543 comments (clear)

  1. Stragelets are strange but not dangerous by mochan_s · · Score: 4, Informative

    For those of you freaking out, here's a link Strangelets are strange but not dangerous

    1. Re:Stragelets are strange but not dangerous by jnana · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Okay, tell me that again when a 1-ton strangelet rips through the roof of your house and goes through you from head to toe. Which part of that doesn't sound dangerous, or plausible (albeit unlikely)?

    2. Re:Stragelets are strange but not dangerous by Erris · · Score: 3, Funny
      Speak for yourself, but I'm becoming increasingly afraid of spontaneous human combustion.

      Try not to get too hot over it.

      --
      DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
    3. Re:Stragelets are strange but not dangerous by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      It's really not even worth considering, much like being hit by a meteor. OK, a bit of quick, incredibly inaccurate math:

      Let's assume, for a second, that you're Joe Average. You have a 32-inch waist, so your cross-sectional area (assuming you're perfectly circular) is pi*(32/(2*pi))^2, or 81.5, square inches (using 3.14 as pi).

      The Earth is about 24,000 miles around. Assuming it's a sphere, that makes its surface area 4*pi*(24,000*5,280*12)^2, or 2.90 x 10^19, square inches.

      Assuming an equal distribution of strangelet hits over the surface of the Earth, you will be hit by 2*(81.5 / 2.90 x 10^19) of the strangelets that hit the Earth's surface, which rounds off to approximately a 2 x 10^-17 chance of an impact per strangelet.

      Assuming 2 is the average number of strangelet events in a given year, your odds of being hit by a strangelet are 1 in 3 x 10^15 (3 quadrillion) or so in your lifetime (if you live for 80 years). Those odds are equivalent to winning the lottery back-to-back, then rolling a pair of dice once and getting snake eyes. To put it another way, it's equivalent to getting hit by two bolts of lightning at the same time and then rolling a 00 on two consecutive D100s.

      (Disclaimer: I am not a statistician, and I don't even have a calculator, so this was all back-of-the-envelope math and is probably grossly inaccurate.)

    4. Re:Stragelets are strange but not dangerous by Aceticon · · Score: 3, Funny

      It is left as an exercise to the reader to do the same calculations using metric units.

    5. Re:Stragelets are strange but not dangerous by jelle · · Score: 2

      A strangelet probably doesn't need a bulls eye hit to kill a person. The surface area of the lethal region might be 1000 times larger than the surface area of a standing person (hmm, come to think of it, we spend a lot of time sitting or lying down, increasing our surface area). Well, that gives us a change of 1 in 10^12 to be killed by a strangelet. With a planet population of approx 6*10^9, that means that once every 166 generations (20 year/generation * 166 generations =3333 years), somebody will be killed by a strangelet.

      Maybe Elvis was killed by a strangelet. ;-)

      --
      --- Hindsight is 20/20, but walking backwards is not the answer.
    6. Re:Stragelets are strange but not dangerous by daeley · · Score: 2

      Mod parent down, it's Flamebait if I've heard it. ;)

      --
      I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate.
  2. The articles builds up their destructive mass... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    And then ends it with "humans are unlikely to be harmed." We can't make Hollywood blockbusters with those types of "facts." Killer Strangelets from Outer Space needs to have KILLER Stragelets!

  3. statistical data by doubtless · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I would really like to see the statistical data of earth quakes, What are the possibilities of that happening just by chance, as compared to stranglets or any other 'unconfirmed' theories.

    Sometimes human has the tendencies to take coincidence and correlations as evidence, not that I am saying this is the case.

    --
    geek page at KY speaks
    1. Re:statistical data by H310iSe · · Score: 2

      ok, I see 500,000 detectable earthquakes a year (earthquake.usgs.gov) but they found earthquakes in 1993 so we presume their 1,000,000 earthquakes sampled happened over the course of maybe 10 years (knowing this would help)? So out of 5 million they studied 1m.

      Total area of earth = 500,000,000 km^2. 10 years is 3650 days (5,250,000 minutes) so the average number of earthquakes per minute is, conveniently, one and the distribution is 1 per 100 sq km.

      What's the chance of 2 earthquakes happening at opposite sides of the world? Howabout within 30 seconds of eachother? See, I never got statistics, I have no idea how to figure this out. Anyone?

      --
      closed minded is as closed minded does
    2. Re:statistical data by TheLink · · Score: 2

      The stuff doesn't have to enter and exit in diametrically opposite points.

      I'd prefer seeing better proof than this. e.g. entry/exit holes.

      I know it's hard to find such proof but hey so's that cold fusion thingy.

      Link.

      --
    3. Re:statistical data by MadAhab · · Score: 2
      Right... In fact, they are unlikely to have opposed entry and exit points; that assumes that every particle hits a bulls-eye. If you knew the speed of the particles, you could do a correlation of two earthquake events, but from the article it appears they calculated the speed from the timing of the quakes.

      So in order to make this hypothesis fly, you'd need evidence of some unexplained explosions, or else you'd need some statistical analysis that it's unlikely two given quakes are so closely timed. That would mean sifting through earthquake data and finding anomolous correlations between two quake events that are geologically unrelated, with these anomolies occurring at a rate much higher than chance. Given that they are identifying specific events, it's unlikely they did this kind of comparison, so the whole thing is likely just bad science: you could say that we have 10 times more of these events than we can account for by chance, but you could then only say that there's a 9 of 10 chance that a particular event is unexplained by coincidence.

      Einstein's most ignored lesson may be that armchair speculation is an important component of real science. Real scientists do it all the time. It should make sense on that level, and also be confirmed by rigorous experients and mathematics.

      --
      Expanding a vast wasteland since 1996.
    4. Re:statistical data by Cryptosporidium · · Score: 2
      They're basing this assertion on just two small medium-small quakes each, spaced 19 and 26 seconds apart respectively.


      Not quite. If you read the report by the researchers (Two Seismic Events with the Properties for the Passage of Strange Quark Matter Through the Earth), you will see that they are basing their findings on much more than "just two small medium-small quakes each," as you say.



      Take a look at the caption on page six, which gives a short summary of why they do not believe the seismic activities are due to earthquakes, but, instead, ton-size strange quark nuggets.

  4. Huh? by gangibson · · Score: 2, Interesting
    ...seismometers recorded a violent event in Antarctica that packed a punch of several thousand tons of TNT ... The small size of strangelets means the blast is only big enough to have a very localised effect and humans are unlikely to be harmed.
    Oh.... okayyyyy... Huh. It's a very small incredibly powerful explosion, I guess. Must be like how there is a very low chance of a person being hit by lightning, but getting hit by lightning would still suck!
    1. Re:Huh? by Waffle+Iron · · Score: 2
      And then it goes on to say that "The small size of strangelets means the blast is only big enough to have a very localised effect and humans are unlikely to be harmed." How can several thousand tons of TNT not harm someone if he or she is hit?

      I would guess that most of the "thousands of tons of TNT" is released deep under ground as the particle travels through the earth spread over hundreds of miles. Thus, the total energy given off at any one point would be relatively small. Maybe the explosion at the actual surface of the earth would just be a smallish bang.

      Humans would unlikely to be harmed because they are unlikely to be hit directly. IIRC, there is no record of anyone ever being hit and killed by a meteor. All the people on earth just don't add up to a very big target.

    2. Re:Huh? by foobar104 · · Score: 2

      How can several thousand tons of TNT not harm someone if he or she is hit?

      I think geologists talk about energy in a different way than what you and I are accustomed to. I seem to remember reading somewhere-- it's too late to go searching now, sorry-- that the Hiroshima explosion released about the same amount of energy as a magnitude 6 earthquake. While a magnitude 6 quake is certainly not a small temblor, it's not a city-flattener, either.

      I think the difference is that much of the energy from a bomb blast is released as heat, resulting in fires and whatnot; also, a bomb results in a very large air shock wave, which does quite a bit of physical damage.

      An earthquake, on the other hand, releases its energy underground. Say you took the entire state of Wyoming and dropped it one centimeter: wham! The amount of energy involved would be astronomical, but the net result would be barely enough to rattle your good china.

    3. Re:Huh? by peter+hoffman · · Score: 2
      IIRC, there is no record of anyone ever being hit and killed by a meteor.

      Information about the 123 deaths from meteorites in the past couple of centuries is here.

    4. Re:Huh? by Waffle+Iron · · Score: 2
      Information about the 123 deaths from meteorites in the past couple of centuries is here

      I'd have to take that listing with a big grain of salt. Notice how there are almost no deaths reported in the 20th century (and almost no incidents at all in the last 50 years) despite the fact that the population was at least 4 times greater than in the 19th century, where total carnage was reported. The great thing about the Internet is that you can find pages to back any argument. For example:

      From here:

      There are some old Chinese records of people being killed by falling meteorites, but there is no record of meteorite deaths in modern times. Elizabeth Hodges, of Sylacauga, Alabama, was given a terrible bruise on the side by a falling meteorite in 1954, and a young boy was struck in the head by a meteorite that had been slowed down by the leaves of a banana plant in Uganda in 1992. The Nakhla meteorite killed a dog when it fell in Egypt in 1911.

      And from here:

      Some researchers claim to have found reports in Chinese annals of people being killed by meteorites including tens of thousand of people in the 15th century. Many of the stories of meteorite fatalities are probably untrue. Some undoubtedly are due to hailstones rather than meteorites which, even today, can result in a large number of deaths, such as the 92 people killed in Bangladesh on 14 April 1986.
    5. Re:Huh? by TheSync · · Score: 2

      I was struck by lightning...not too bad ;)

      But really, I was a resistor in a small branch of a large parallel circuit. Plenty of people die or get very weird injuries from lighting, I'm just lucky.

      Maybe that's why I wanted to become an electrical engineer...

  5. Re:What about... by Man+of+E · · Score: 2, Insightful
    Good point. IANAPP (particle physicist), but it seems odd that you would get such a big cluster of strange quarks, considering they each have something like -e/3 charge.

    If I may make an unqualified suggestion, any uplets or downlets would probably be too small to cause a significant impact, and bottomlets, toplets, charmedlets are likely too big to be stable. Please can any particle physicists out there explain what's going on?

    --
    Ceci n'est pas une sig
  6. second impact? by AnimeFreak · · Score: 4, Funny
    The second event in November started in the Pacific Ocean travelling through Earth to appear in Antarctica 19 seconds later.
    For some reason Neon Genesis Evangleion comes to mind.
  7. you start getting worried by 56ker · · Score: 2

    Then you reach the end of the article and they write "The small size of strangelets means the blast is only big enough to have a very localised effect and humans are unlikely to be harmed." to reassure people and stop them panicking!

    --


    Video Game cheats, hints a
  8. Re:Faster than light? by Man+of+E · · Score: 3, Informative

    The speed of light is about 185,000 miles per second, or 11,100,000 mph, so these things are moving at 0.1c. Still not inconsiderable, mind you, considering their mass...

    --
    Ceci n'est pas une sig
  9. Chances... by ImaLamer · · Score: 2
    I have often wondered what are the chances that these things could come to Earth.

    Considering we have seen (or measured) two instances I wonder when we will see more? Not just with these particles but other such strange or heavy particles.

    It's kind of cool - of all the space out there, literally, two (maybe the same one) has come through Earth. Very exciting indeed. I wonder what the implications of an encounter are. Are there anything that such a particle would change?

    I wonder though what would happen if it rips through your body, would you feel it? Imagine looking down on the scale in the morning and seeing it explode.

    One at a time please!


    [Karma Whores please reply with good information on Strangelets - Google isn't giving me great sites]
    --
    Get your Unix fortune now!
    1. Re:Chances... by TheOnlyCoolTim · · Score: 2

      Two came through in the year 1993. Unless 1993 was special I would expect that this has happened more than twice.

      Somewhat similar to this story is the idea that the Tunguska explosion might have been caused by a small amount of antimatter or even a small black hole hitting Siberia.

      Tim

      --
      Omnia vestra castrorum habetur nobis.
    2. Re:Chances... by starman97 · · Score: 2

      Last I heard, the thinking on Tunguska was that
      it was either a chunk of CO2 ice or Methane Ice
      that made it down to about 1 mile above ground before breakingup and vaporising. The Methane hypothesis also mentions the possibility of a HUGE fuel-air detonation...

      --
      Starman97@Gmail.com (bring it on spammers)
    3. Re:Chances... by josh+crawley · · Score: 2

      Nope, I dont think that at all. I have another theory about the Tungsta explosion.

      It was man-made. Do you know when that happened (event wise, mind you?). It was when scientists went to the north pole for the first time. Another little fact: the Magnetic north pole and The Tungsta explosion center are on the same degree horizontal. Also, given the devastation of the area, and lack of debris, a comet could not have hit it. Next, having a black hole is preposterous. Instead, It looks like a nasty lightning storm hit it.

      Well, it could have been hit by electricity. Static electricity. Personally, I thing Tesla was behind that one. Why so? he was there then, and he needed proof that he could do nasty stuff. What better than to blast the north pole. He missed. We know he was messing around with directing electricty through air and ground (we have the patents that correspond).

      I'd be the first to think a rock or ice cube would clobber that area, BUT where is the debris? That black hole idea sounds like Hawking-ish crap.

    4. Re:Chances... by TheOnlyCoolTim · · Score: 2

      Black hole and antimatter are ideas but they are less likely ideas :P.

      They are at least sensible ideas to hold, unlike the various ideas about UFOs, time travelling guys with a nuclear bomb, and a forgotten invention of Tesla's (which already has two replies!).

      Tim

      --
      Omnia vestra castrorum habetur nobis.
  10. Re:Entrance/Exit Point by dtdns · · Score: 2, Informative

    Given the surface area of the planet that is not water, and then the area of land that is habitable, and the area of habitable land that people actually live on, you end up with a percentage so low (I'm too lazy to go number crunching, it's late) that the probability of one of these things coming down on LA, New York, London, etc, is so low that it's not even really worth spending time to think about it.

  11. Would these actually create an entry/exit wound? by dstone · · Score: 2

    From the article: "Just a single pollen-sized fragment is believed to weigh several tons... The small size of strangelets means the blast is only big enough to have a very localised effect and humans are unlikely to be harmed."

    "Unlikely" because the tiny blast is statistically unlikely to be near a person, I assume. So any theories on if these would actually damage a human if it DID pass through them?

  12. Re:What about... by 56ker · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Question: Can you get the six names of quarks: up, down, top, bottom, strange and charmed into one sentence without it being nonsensical and without being clever like writing, "There are six types of quark: up, down, bottom, strange and charmed."?

    --


    Video Game cheats, hints a
  13. Re:Would these actually create an entry/exit wound by camusflage · · Score: 2

    So any theories on if these would actually damage a human if it DID pass through them?

    I dunno. From the article, it "packed the punch of several thousand tons of TNT." If you put several thousand tons of TNT on the head of a pin, would it really matter how many angels there were?

    Think back to high school physics.. F = 1/2 mv^2. From the article, if you get several tons up to 900,000 mph, that's going to leave a mark if it hits you...

    --
    The truth about Scientology, Xenu, and you: Operation Clambake
  14. Re:Would these actually create an entry/exit wound by nightfire-unique · · Score: 2
    So any theories on if these would actually damage a human if it DID pass through them?

    Unfortunately, the energy released just from the localized destruction of the tissues would be enough to instantly vaporize any poor soul who were to find themselves in the path of one of these things. Luckily, as noted, the odds of this are infinitesimally small.

    Knock wood, I guess. :)

    --
    A government is a body of people notably ungoverned - AC
  15. Re:What about... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    It was strangely charming to see her bottom go up and down while I should've been more interested in watching her top, this being a jump-rope contest after all.

  16. Re:What about... by Skyfire · · Score: 5, Funny

    I went up the elevator to the top of the building, where everyone lives a charmed life, then I took it back down to the bottom where the sysadmins are strange.

    --
    Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
  17. Re:What about... by Bhang · · Score: 4, Funny

    As she was smiling down at the bottom row of people, I glanced up at the top row, to see the woman who charmed me with her strange eyes.

    --
    Sig
  18. Everyone's speed of light is different.... by Spaceman+Spiff+II · · Score: 4, Funny

    It's funny how all the replies list different speeds of light in mph..

    --
    I understand that life's not fair, just why is it never unfair in my favor?
    1. Re:Everyone's speed of light is different.... by Jester99 · · Score: 2

      Well, clearly everybody here is correct, however nobody's specifying the speed of light through what. The speed of light particles through a pure vacuum is 3.0e+8 meters per second, however it is thought to be slower through air or other dense media. Everyone's just responding in their own frame of reference. :)

      (FWIW, I calculate it as 7.7e+8 mi/hr)

    2. Re:Everyone's speed of light is different.... by isorox · · Score: 3, Funny

      It's funny how all the replies list different speeds of light in mph..

      Only because everyone's ruler is a different length

    3. Re:Everyone's speed of light is different.... by Snafoo · · Score: 2

      Everyone knows the speed of light is 600mph, which it's day on one side of the world's disc while night on the other.

      (With apologies to Terry Pratchett).

      --
      - undoware.ca
  19. seems a little dodgy.... by Slurpee · · Score: 2, Interesting

    The scientists looked through "millions" of records of earthquakes, and find two examples where a disturbance occurs kinda on the other side of the world, approx 20 seconds later.

    And from this they are able to determine the speed, size and effects of the particles.

    The lack of specific data disturbs me, as does the jumps in logic.

    Does anyone have links to anything with more specifics?

  20. Not wounds, but woundlets... by jerryasher · · Score: 2, Funny

    Well they weigh several tons. One article said they would leave a crater. My body typically reacts violently when craters appear in it. (And that hasn't regularly occurred for 15 years now...)

  21. Re:Entrance/Exit Point by ShadowDrgn · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Wouldn't a particle moving that fast with that much momentum leave some sort of exit point that could still be seen.

    Two points in Antartica; the other two are in the ocean. Good luck finding any of those.

  22. Re:Would these actually create an entry/exit wound by Consul · · Score: 5, Funny

    Could these be the long-awaited explanation for spontaneous human combustion? ;o)

    --

    -----

    "You spilled my egg... I needed that egg."

  23. i guess there's new unluckiest way to die by Edmund+Blackadder · · Score: 2

    get hit by strangelet on the head.

    Now if a nuclear warhead gets hit by a strangelet, well then its the unluckiet way to die for some unlucky city, or state.

    1. Re:i guess there's new unluckiest way to die by BCoates · · Score: 2

      I don't think nuclear weapons go off just by being hit, even if you hit them really hard.

    2. Re:i guess there's new unluckiest way to die by Kris_J · · Score: 2

      If it was in True Lies then it must be true? I thought that a nuclear weapon was two halves of a suitably-processed radioactive material that was rammed together by conventional explosive -- giving it the mass and energy it needs for a runaway reaction. (Hence the term "critical mass".) Surely a stranglet would contain enough energy to at least set off the conventional explosive if not the nuclear material directly.

    3. Re:i guess there's new unluckiest way to die by G-funk · · Score: 2

      I'd say they definitely would (at least the trigger nuke) if hit by something that small and dense, travelling that fast. After all it's smashing a bunch of heavy stuff together really hard that creates the inital fission reaction in the first place.

      --
      Send lawyers, guns, and money!
    4. Re:i guess there's new unluckiest way to die by RollingThunder · · Score: 2

      Somewhat correct... but the explosives must -perfectly- slam the subcritical masses together. That's why making a nuke is still hugely expensive.

    5. Re:i guess there's new unluckiest way to die by LWolenczak · · Score: 2

      It depends on how it hits... but really, with it's mass, and speed..... If it hit any fissionable material... it would be bad... very bad.... It may not be as bad as the full effect of a nuke going off, but lets say 1 ton, in at the size of a pinhead... hitting an unstable decaying nuclear material. I wonder what has happened when one of these things has hit fissionable material underground...

      Maybe this is something for all those supercomputers my tax dollars go to.

    6. Re:i guess there's new unluckiest way to die by BlueUnderwear · · Score: 2
      If it was in True Lies then it must be true?

      Not necessarily. It could also be a lie...

      --
      Say no to software patents.
    7. Re:i guess there's new unluckiest way to die by BCoates · · Score: 2
      Steven M. Bellovin (one of the people responsible for USENET, dontcha know) has a cool page about nuclear weapon security systems. He makes it pretty clear that it's nontrivial to set off a modern nuclear weapon accidentally or even maliciously if you don't have the codes to fire them. Even in 1961, setting off a the explosives didn't necessarily mean a nuclear yield:

      In at least one incident, a nuclear weapon did come very close to accidental detonation. In 1961, a B-52 with two large warheads crashed near Goldsboro, North Carolina; the impact set off the conventional explosives in one of the bombs, and triggered all but one of the safety mechanisms in the other.
      --
      Benjamin Coates
    8. Re:i guess there's new unluckiest way to die by TheSync · · Score: 2

      Fission weapons are generally two pieces of fissionable material brought together rapidly. Their total mass and orientation must be one where more enough neutrons stay in the material to fission it rather than leave the surface of the material in order to achieve an exponentially increasing rate of fission...i.e. critical mass.

      As they approach, neutrons released from spontaneous fissioning begins to fission other atoms, releasing neutrons, chain reaction + heat, etc. If they are brought together too slowly, the fissionable material will simply blow itself apart and no longer be at critical mass, thus not releasing the full possible energy. Thus, the use of explosives for rapid assembly of the critical mass.

      In plutonium fission weapons, a shell of material is imploded upon a center core which actually deforms and compresses. This is because the achievement of the non-critical vs. critical mass is a bit touchier than with uranium weapons. (The other side of critical mass is keeping the two masses non-critical until initiation). Uranium weapons are usually "gun type" where a projectile is fired into a stationary target.

      In all fission weapons, there is a neutron generator made up of polonium and beryllium that, when crushed at the moment of impact of the two fissionable masses, generates plenty of neutrons to ensure that the fissioning process gets going, otherwise again the two masses may pass by/through each other without achieving optimal criticality.

  24. Cowbow Neal? by moniker_21 · · Score: 2

    "Strangelets were formed in the Big Bang. They are predicted to have many unusual properties, including a density about 10 trillion (10 million million) times greater than lead. Just a single pollen-sized fragment is believed to weigh several tons."

    Or approx. the same density as Cowboy Neal, although I'd bet he can't move nearly as fast as these little suckers do.

    --
    I posted to /. and all I got was this stupid sig
  25. another theory by Romancer · · Score: 2, Interesting


    Couldn't these earthquakes be a result from internal shifting within the Earths core? If a small inner-earth bubble/rupture/explosion/quake/etc occured and was slightly off center then the two resulting earthquakes would be a result of this internal verifiable cause. One directly following another. Rather than a mysterious super dense non detectable string of big-bang aftermath.
    As they are looking at the effect only, without other data (as far as I saw) this explination fits as well as theirs and doesn't involve unverifiable cosmic strings.

    --


    ) Human Kind Vs Human Creation
    ) It'd be interesting to see how many humans would survive to serve us.
  26. Re:Faster than light? by dadragon · · Score: 2

    My bad, confusing mph with mps.

    --
    God save our Queen, and Heaven bless The Maple Leaf Forever!
  27. Need Funding? by Perdo · · Score: 4, Funny

    Tell the military they can weaponize this. See how long it takes them to allocate the funds to restart the superconducting supercollider. Just fire a negatively charged strangelet at the chinese and watch the entire country dissapear... sure, the entire planet would be destroyed too, but that was the case with nuclear weapons, and it never stopped their deployment.

    --

    If voting were effective, it would be illegal by now.

  28. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 2

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  29. what? by RayBender · · Score: 2, Insightful
    Let me get this straight - these guys combed through a database of ??? earthquakes and found a whopping two instances where two earthquakes hapened within a few seconds of each other on nearly-opposite sides of the world. Given how frequent these small earthquakes are I'm surprised they only found two - just from random chance.

    And they use this rather sketchy data to make claims about a very extraordinary discovery... an until now completely unknown form of matter.

    This isn't the first time I wish a bit more critical thought had been applied by the journalist. Or the reviewer for that matter.

    --
    Human genome = 3 billion base pairs = 6 GBit. Windows + Office = 20 Gbit. Which is more impressive?
    1. Re:what? by Kris_J · · Score: 2

      They weren't earthquakes -- they were explosions that can be picked up by earthquake monitoring equipment.

    2. Re:what? by tconnors · · Score: 5, Insightful

      RTFP:

      http://xxx.adelaide.edu.au/abs/astro-ph/?0205089

      What, you trust everything the popular media says? You don't watch to CNN, do you?

    3. Re:what? by RocketScientist · · Score: 2

      As far as the antarctica bit, there is a very sensitive seismograph at the south pole. Two reasons: very sparsely populated area (fewer false readings) and it probably makes it easier to triangulate where seismic events happen since it's far away from the rest of the seismographs.

  30. Some info about strangelets by ChenLing · · Score: 5, Interesting

    First of all, some basic particle physics:
    There are 6 kinds of quarks (in increasing mass):
    up, down, strage, charm, bottom (beauty), and top (truth).
    The last of which was experimentally verified only recently.

    All matter is made up of combinations of quarks, usually either in pairs (mesons), or trios (baryons).
    For example, protons are made up of two ups and one down; neutrons are made up of one up and two downs.

    Strange quarks are named such because the particles that contain them are produced fast and decay slow (ie., they have very long lifetimes), which is very odd considering that they are much more massive (heavier things tend to decay faster).

    Strangelets now, are an odd beast. They usually contain more than 2 or 3 quarks, and can contain quarks other than strange quarks.
    One variety (the more common one) contains a large mixture of up and some down quarks along with the strange, and has a net positive charge.
    These are quite safe as they will bond with a pair of electrons and act like an unusually heavy helium isotope.
    One that is mostly strange will have a net negative charge, and (I don't quite understand the process) gobble up all the positively charged atomic nuclei that it encounters.

    As a side note, strangelets are supposed to only occur in conditions of high pressure and (relatively) low temperature, like inside of a neutron star.

    --
    "You have the option of insanity. I do not. And that makes me crazy!" - Brian to Angela, My So-Called Life
    1. Re:Some info about strangelets by Observer · · Score: 2
      All matter is made up of combinations of quarks...

      And leptons. Don't forget the leptons.


      (Insert reference to Spanish Inquisition sketch here.)

    2. Re:Some info about strangelets by stevelinton · · Score: 5, Informative

      To explain a bit more, a system is only stable, if it can't get to a lower energy state without breaking some rule. Since one kind of quark can turn into another pretty freely, this favours systems made up to the lowest energy quarks, namely up. However, two things combine to make the proton stable (uud) rather than the particle with three up quarks, whose name I can't recall:

      One is ordinary electrostatics. up quarks have positive charge (2/3 of a unit, as it happens), down quarks negative (-1/3) so cramming three u quarks together involves overcoming more electrostatic repulsion that forming a proton.

      The other is a litle subtler. Many of you will be familiar with the idea of "shells" of electrons inside an atom, representing groups of possible energy levels for an electron, each able to hold just one electron. Something similar goes on in any compact collection of quarks: isolated baryon, atomic nucleus, strangelet or neutron star core. Each energy level can be occupied by at most one quark <emph>of each flavour</emph>. This favours structures with reasonably equal balances between the types of quarks. So a proton, uud with the us in the two lowest energy states and the d in the lowest state, ends up with lower total energy than uuu, which would have to use three enegry states.

      OK. Now what happens when we try and compute the stable options for clusters of quarks.

      With small numbers of quarks, we have to strike a balance between the fact that u are lighter and the goal of balancing u & d to keep the energy levels low and the electrostatic problems to a minimum. Solutions to this make up all the stable atomic nuclei from 1H (uud) to lead nuclei with 250--300 quarks of each type.

      Somewhat larger stable clusters do not form, the electrostatic repulsion and the high energy states into which the quarks would be forced mean that they can lose energy by splitting into two smaller clusters, so they do, hence nuclear fission.

      When cluster sizes get very large, then gravity starts to play a role. Solar mass sized clusters of u and d quarks (2 downs to 1 up, so the whole thing is neutral) can be stablized, despite the energy cost of all the down quarks, by the mutual gravitational attraction. The result is a neutron star. The fact that quarks are in different spatial locations also helps with the energy level problem.

      It is suggested that collections of quarks intermediate in mass between nuclei and neutron stars may be stable, if they contain a significant portion of strange quarks. Although basically heavier and so more energetic than u and d quarks, they would be free to occupy the lowest energy levels. Estimates of how massive these clusters would need to be to be stable vary wildly. One the one hand people are looking for extra-compact neutron-star like objects on the other hand for "stranglets" a few microns across and massing tons.

    3. Re:Some info about strangelets by room101 · · Score: 2

      Nice, but you misstated something:

      Many of you will be familiar with the idea of "shells" of electrons inside an atom, representing groups of possible energy levels for an electron, each able to hold just one electron.

      Not true. The first shell can hold two, and the upper ones can hold more than that. I did a google search for "electron shells" and took the first link; it talks about this a bit at the bottom of the page. In fact the idea of the noble gasses depends on the fact that they have the properties that they do because each sucessive shell is maxed out, thus they are inert. You could even say that the idea of the periodic table organization is built upon the idea of the filling of electron shells.

      Perhaps you just got this confused with the quark theory and misspoke?

      HTH.

      --
      room101 -- how much can you stand before they break you?
      (they always break you eventually)
    4. Re:Some info about strangelets by stevelinton · · Score: 2

      Each shell groups a number of levels. Each level can only hold one electron.

  31. Re:Would these actually create an entry/exit wound by Bios_Hakr · · Score: 2

    Didn't they explain that on CSI last season...next season...Jack the Ripper

    --
    I'd rather you do it wrong, than for me to have to do it at all.
  32. Re:What about... by soundsop · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Question: Can you get the six names of quarks: up, down, top, bottom, strange and charmed into one sentence without it being nonsensical and without being clever like writing, "There are six types of quark: up, down, bottom, strange and charmed."?

    I remember my physics teacher saying that the Europeans preferred the quark names truth and beauty to top and bottom. Unfortunately, top and bottom seem to have won out.

    So I think that top and bottom should be replaced with truth and beauty in the challenge!

  33. formed in the big bang? by rabidcow · · Score: 2, Interesting

    as they tore through Earth at up to 900,000 mph

    Formed in the Big Bang and inside extremely dense stars,

    Any ideas why anything moving that fast, formed in the big bang would still be important?

    Unless the universe is closed, wouldn't they be further out than anything less crazy?

    1. Re:formed in the big bang? by bertok · · Score: 5, Informative

      The big bang is not an explosion with a epicenter -- a common misconception perpetuated by the popular media. It started everywhere, and the results of the explosion are going outwards from every point. The diagrams at the Cosmology FAQ help:

      http://www.astro.ucla.edu/~wright/nocenter.html

    2. Re:formed in the big bang? by Skapare · · Score: 2

      If the universe is expanding, then doesn't that mean there is some measure (even if we don't know what it is) of the size?

      --
      now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
  34. Re:Faster than light? by ninewands · · Score: 2

    errmmmmmm ....

    186000 miles/second (the classical Michaelson-Morley speed of light) * 60 * 60 =

    6.96e+08 mph ...

    if the strangelets are moving at an average velocity of 1,000,000 mph, they are nowhere CLOSE to 0.1c ... more like 0.0014934289c. Barely fast enough to be considered relativistic.

    --
    utter rubbish
  35. Re:What would happen if you hold one of these thin by mabinogi · · Score: 2

    I think you'll find that one gram of them wouldn't do much more than one gram of anything.

    The only difference is that one gram of strangelet would be so small, that you wouldn't know you were holding it in the first place.

    grams are a measure of mass, and the gravitational force an object exerts is relative to it's mass.
    Objects with a mass of 1 gram don't tend to make worlds dissapear.

    --
    Advanced users are users too!
  36. Horseshit. by Bowie+J.+Poag · · Score: 4, Funny



    A pollen-sized grain of anything weighing over a ton and travelling at 900,000 miles an hour would leave a crater so large that it could fit the entire quantity of bullshit pseudo-science that comes out of Southern Methodist University.

    Amazing.

    Cheers,

    --
    Bowie J. Poag

    1. Re:Horseshit. by Alsee · · Score: 5, Insightful

      A pollen-sized grain of anything weighing over a ton and travelling at 900,000 miles an hour would leave a crater so large

      No, it will make a disruption a bit larger than a pollen grain. Kind of like firing a rifle bullet at a piece of tissue paper.

      -

      --
      - - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
  37. out of curiosity... by 7-Vodka · · Score: 2, Interesting

    What would happen if one of those hit someone in the head?

    --

    Liberty.

  38. Re:Entrance/Exit Point by ninewands · · Score: 2

    "Several tons" (let's be conservative and say 10) moving at approximately a million mph yields a kinetic evergy of ... oh ... let's say several megatons.

    If strangelets (1) exist, and (2) are common enough that there were to Earth impacts in one year, then why aren't we all dead from "Nuclear Winter" effects??

    Enquiring minds want to know ...

    --
    utter rubbish
  39. Strange fantasy! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    As I grabbed her bottom, she got up, took off her top, gave me a strange glance, then went down on me and charmed ol' one-eye.

  40. Re:What about... by 56ker · · Score: 2

    According to what I heard the original names were truth and beauty as opposed to top & bottom. As to the challenge if you want you can try it with the original six - it's probably a little harder to get less common words like truth and beauty in than top and bottom.

    --


    Video Game cheats, hints a
  41. Re:Entrance/Exit Point by BCoates · · Score: 2

    That only works if all their kinetic energy is realeased at the point of impact. It appears that they punch through the planet and leave with most of their velocity, so they only release a a fraction of that, spread over the path they take through the planet.

    --
    Benjamin Coates

  42. Re:Entrance/Exit Point by Salsaman · · Score: 3, Funny
    You notice occasionally in the press, reports of odd explosions which are normally put down to gas leaks and such, and in most cases this is probably the truth.

    However, a small fraction of these *could* be due to strangelets hitting the Earth. It's not very scientific, but a search on Google for 'unexplained explosion' comes up with over 14,000 items...

  43. Re:Entrance/Exit Point by zhensel · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Yes, these things have a kinetic energy of .5*several_friggin_tons*9E10 Ton Miles^2/Hour^2, but that doesn't mean that all that energy is lost in the passage through the earth. A BB can rip through a sheet of paper and leave a small puncture rather than tear the thing apart - imagine what a BB traveling at a thousand miles per hour would leave... just a hole of its own size most likely. These things have such high mass and velocity that they're hardly going to scatter off of anything or slow down much after they vaporize anything in their path.

    Now what you should really worry about is a strangelet collision :)

  44. Re:What about... by AJWM · · Score: 2

    Aye, and in truth, she was a beauty.

    (Sigh, I miss the old names.)

    --
    -- Alastair
  45. Re:What about... by cybermage · · Score: 2

    Here goes:

    As strange as the truth may seem, whether you look up, down, left, or right, it is far easier to be charmed by beauty than by beast.

    --
    Some people have a way with words, and some people, um, thingy.
  46. Re:out of curiosity... by XBL · · Score: 2

    Imagine a hole through your head that is wide as a grain of pollen. So small, but would still do a lot of damage for sure. There might be an exit wound the size of a pin head, at the largest.

    This would be fatal, as the brain would probably just seize until you are dead.

  47. Re:Entrance/Exit Point by foobar104 · · Score: 5, Funny

    It's not very scientific, but a search on Google for 'unexplained explosion' comes up with over 14,000 items...

    Yes, but a search on Google for "unexplained fish" comes up with over 23,000 items. What's your point? ;-)

  48. You know what this means, don't you by Tablizer · · Score: 2


    Yet another reason for your insurance company to jack up your rates.

    --
    Table-ized A.I.
  49. Re:Entrance/Exit Point by shepd · · Score: 2, Funny

    >a search on Google for 'unexplained explosion' comes up with over 14,000 items...

    A google search for "sandwich explosion" gives me 24,800 hits.

    What I want to know is why, with this many exploding sandwiches, I've never come across one...

    --
    If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
  50. Re:Faster than light? by Kris_J · · Score: 4, Funny

    Since when is a mile defined in terms of meters? You must work at NASA.

  51. Re:Faster than light? by canadian_right · · Score: 2
    Fail math?

    The speed of light through a vacuum is about 360,000 miles per SECOND.

    900,000 mph is 250 miles per second.

    Hmmmm, which is bigger 250 or 360,000?

    And light is stilll the winnnner!

    --
    Anarchists never rule
  52. Re:Would these actually create an entry/exit wound by damien_kane · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I don't think so.
    If you shot a bullet at a piece of cloth or paper that was held taught, it would merely put a hole in the paper, not obliterate it.
    If you shot it at point-blank, the explosion from the initial firing of the shell would have more effect on the paper than damage caused by the shell itself.
    If such a strangelet shot through matter, it would probably do two things (both, not one or the other)...

    1. It would create a tiny pin-sized hole in what it was passing through (as the only way matter can go through other matter is to push said other matter out of its way).
    It's not like the particle would mushrooom like a hollowpoint round, think of it more as an AP round (DUC maybe?).
    If a person gets shot with a depleted uranium shell (at a far enough range with a high velocity) It will merely pass through said person, whereas a hollowpoint (because of the mushrooming) would either leave a big exit wound or bounce around for a little while turn said person's guts into pudding... (no, don't say blood pudding... that's just a bad pun)...

    2. A lot of the matter it passes through would be converted to some other form of matter, as the strangelet particle loses/gains other quarks from the surrounding matter it passes through. If effect, passing through something like a planet would probably take half its mass and at least some of its velocity as the energy is expended.

  53. Re:What's going to happen if... by Kris_J · · Score: 2

    Don't need stranglets for that.

  54. Re:Faster than light? by foobar104 · · Score: 2

    Sure, we'd be using gigameters to measure stuff, and time would need to be completely resorted, but I'm sure it would work out well in the end...

    One of my favorite authors likes to measure time in seconds. (He writes far-future science fiction.) His most recent book includes a cheat-sheet in the front mapping traditional units of time (hours, years, whatnot) to seconds. If I remember right, one kilosecond is about fifteen minutes, and one megasecond is just over 10 days. One year is a little more than 30 megaseconds.

    I'll stick with days, weeks, and months, if you please.

  55. Localized effects of high density matter by oldzoot · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I wonder what kind of neat science tricks one can do with managable amounts of extreme density matter. The strangelets are one example, the problem of interacting with them has more to do with their speed than with their mass. If we could find a way to slow one down it could be very interesting to study. Perhaps we could magnetically contain it to prevent contamination with "regular" matter. The interesting thing would be to study the interaction of time and gravity. We have lots of things in the world which weigh many tens, hundreds or thousands of tons, however becauseof their more normal density we can not get close enough to the center of their mass to really study localized gravitational effects. With extreme density matter, we should be able to measure intersting things getting much closer to the center of gravity of a significant mass. Matter of this type might make an interesting component of a ground based anti-balistic missile system. The bullet would be microscopically small, but would have incredible mass and could hold significant kinetic energy, suitable for the destruction of a warhead. The energy source for the prime mover could be any typical huge ground based power plant. Because of the microscopic size of the projectile, air resistance would be insignificant relative to the kinetic energy.

    Zoot

    --
    enough is too much
    1. Re:Localized effects of high density matter by stevelinton · · Score: 3, Interesting
      Matter of this type might make an interesting component of a ground based anti-balistic missile system. The bullet
      would be microscopically small, but would have incredible mass and could hold significant kinetic energy, suitable for the
      destruction of a warhead. The energy source for the prime mover could be any typical huge ground based power plant.
      Because of the microscopic size of the projectile, air resistance would be insignificant relative to the kinetic energy.


      Unfortunately, the target would offer little more resistance than the intervening air. You would drill a micron-sized hole right through the target warhead, depositing almost none of the strangelet's KE in the process. Like trying to shoot down a smoke-cloud with a rifle.
    2. Re:Localized effects of high density matter by Saib0t · · Score: 2
      Matter of this type might make an interesting component of a ground based anti-balistic missile system. The bullet would be microscopically small, but would have incredible mass and could hold significant kinetic energy, suitable for the destruction of a warhead.

      Except that, with this technology, there'd be no war head, "they" would instead simply fire a couple of these nasty massive microscopic thingies directly at the targets...

      Congratulations on inventing a new killer weapon ;-)

      --

      One shall speak only if what one has to say is more beautiful than silence
    3. Re:Localized effects of high density matter by Telastyn · · Score: 2

      Note that due to the time distorting effects of the high density, it may be impossible to slow the things down =]

    4. Re:Localized effects of high density matter by dbretton · · Score: 2

      Of course, that's after making the assumption that you know can predict the *exact* position of the warhead when the particle would arrive.

      No easy feat!

  56. probably wouldn't explode by Goonie · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Only the "gun" uranium fission design works like that, and they are the simplest, most primitive form of nuclear weapon. None of the known nuclear powers uses these any more (the Hiroshima bomb worked like this, but not Nagasaki, and the only other use since was allegedly in South Africa's covert nuclear program because all they were interested in was a proof-of-concept). Implosion designs (the basis for later fission weapons and fusion-boosted designs) rely on multiple chunks of uranium and plutonium to be forced together by precisely-shaped bits of chemical explosive into a superdense, supercritical mass. If they don't go off in precisely the designed pattern, they don't explode.

    Therefore, I'd expect the bomb to be turned into molten slag rather than explode.

    IANA Nuclear Physicist, so I could be horribly wrong :)

    --

    Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
    --Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
    1. Re:probably wouldn't explode by ender81b · · Score: 2

      You are mostly right - The first pakistani nuclear weapon was a 'gun' type. The key difference between the two is that the implosion bomb is more 'efficent.' It is also extremely hard to design and build.

      One of the key problems is getting all the chemical explosives to detonate at precisely the right time. I'm talking within nanoseconds of each other, otherwise you get partial yield. Furthermore, you need to 'shape' the explosives into 'lenses' to focus the detonation wave. Once you do that you MUST insure that the entire thing will collapse as a perfect sphere. Any deviation and you won't get a full yield explosion. One of the critical secrets that Klas Fuchs passed on to the russians was the lense design of the explosives - invented by a Army Seargeant (sp?) whose name escapes me and probably the hardest part of the whole bomb design. Finally, you need a small 'starter' source of nuetrons at the center of the bomb to give off enough nuetrons to cause an explosion at precisely the right time. The whole bomb is constructed like an onion, with the Explosive lenses on the outside, Natural uranium tamper in the next layer, pu239 core, and an 'initator' at the very center.

      The 'gun' type of Nuke weapon (little boy) consists of a Cordite explosive at one end followed by a U235 'bullet'. At the end of the cylinder are u235 target rings embeded in a steel tamper. A velocity of 3,000 Feet per second is needed (at least for little boy). When the bullet hits the rings.. bam.

      All the above is taken from Richard Rhode's The Making of the Atomic Bomb (pulitzer prize winner). Very interesting - I would recomend reading it if you want to learn more.

  57. Re:Faster than light? by ZigMonty · · Score: 2
    Since when is a mile defined in terms of meters? You must work at NASA.

    Sorry to burst your bubble but it is. You could of course just consider it pegged to the speed of light but not as cleanly as the metre.

  58. Re:Both events in Antarctica? by foobar104 · · Score: 2

    Um... yeah. Or you could just go with the "magnetic field" interpretation and have done with it.

  59. Re:out of curiosity... by Edmund+Blackadder · · Score: 2

    its an interesting question.

    It depends how much energy those things will release inside your body. That basicly depends how much you slow it down.

    If you slow it down even a litlle bit ud probably evaporate right then and there.

    But maybe beceuse it is so damn small and fast and humans are nice and soft, it will just cut trough you without changing its speed at all and then you may get lucky. (of course you wil have to worry about the seismic event when it hits the ground).

    As a way of comparison imagine cutting a tomato with a fast swing of a supper sharp japanese sword - the tomato wont be damaged much (aside from being cut in half) now if you try that with a dull knofe you will have one bruised up tomato.

    But this is a very interesting question and i dont think the answer is trivial.

  60. Re:Faster than light? by stevey · · Score: 3, Funny
    And light is stilll the winnnner!

    Huzzah - Go Light!

  61. Re:Faster than light? by Kris_J · · Score: 2

    Uh, a mile is 5,280 feet. 1 Mile == 1,609.2655 meters, hardly a "defined in terms of", much more a later conversion.

  62. My name is not Albert.... but.... by insane8 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    How did they know at what angle the stranglets hit the earth at?

    Ripping through the earth at what angle makes a large difference. Imagine 2 stranglets hit NY NY at the same time. One is comming from a north west direction and the other is comming from south east. The one comming from north west will exit the earth thousands of miles from where the south east one will...

    This tells me that the scietists just looked for any seismic activity that resembled the first (entry) hit. Seismic measurment tools are not all that precise, especially equipment 10 years ago (I had a 486 10 years ago just to give you an idea) and the fact that they are looking for the impact of a particle that is 1/10 of a hair in size. There "proof" relys on the fact that in the past ten years there were two seismic activitys on different parts of the planet that were similar to eachother. Not much proof if you ask me....

  63. Re:Faster than light? by Kris_J · · Score: 2

    Funnily enough, living in a country that's totally metric (Australia), I don't need keep up to date with recent kludges applied to an outdated measurement system. Anyway, you can convert any distance measurement to any other distance measurement but it still doesn't mean that one is defined in terms of the other.

  64. Re:Entrance/Exit Point by PhiRatE · · Score: 2

    I think its quit clear that there are a suspicously low number of unexplained explosions, leading me to conclude that explanations for many explosions are bogus and therefore that there are many strangelets hitting the earth every year and a concerted effort to cover this up to avoid insurance hikes.

    --
    You can't win a fight.
  65. Re:Would these actually create an entry/exit wound by dragons_flight · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Well, I'm hardly an expert, but off hand I'd say it's worth seriously asking whether you would even notice?

    Obviously these carry huge kinetic energies and it would only take only a small percentage of that energy to totally fry a human being. The real question is how much of the energy can a human actually absorb?

    These things have enormous amounts of momentum, and keep in mind that the whole EARTH isn't enough to stop one of these. How much could the soft tissues or even the bones of a human really do to stop one? Passing through at 900,000 mph, these would certainly leave a pollen grain sized hole straight through your body, but how much does it disrupt the surrounding tissues?

    I have been told (though perhaps someone can verify this?) that exit wounds decrease in size as a) bullet size decreases, b) velocity increases, c) less tissue is disrupted along the bullet path. In fact, IIRC exit wounds are larger primarily because of fragementation of the bullet and fragments of bones that get carried out with it. Entry wounds of course just reflect the cross-section of the bullet.

    So a very tiny, very massive, and very fast projectile might well have an exit wound of similar size to the entry wound. In which case the soft tissues of the body might just fill in and you'd never actually know that a pollen grain hole had been made through your body.

  66. Music, maestro, please by Observer · · Score: 3, Funny

    Strangelets in the night....
    </Sinatra>

    It's OK, I was just leaving anyway.

    1. Re:Music, maestro, please by jamesmartinluther · · Score: 2


      exchanging gluons...
      </Sinatra>

  67. Black hole? by blair1q · · Score: 2

    Anyone with the density handy want to cobble up the Schwarzchild radius of one of these puppies and see if it fits inside?

    In case you need it,

    r = 2 G m/c^2.

    c = 2.998e+08 m/s
    G = 6.672e-11 N m^2/kg^2

    --Blair

  68. size by InsaneCreator · · Score: 2

    What?? _Poland_ sized strangelets travelling at 900,000 miles per hour hit the earth... ??

    oh, wait... that's "pollen sized"... whew.

  69. Re:Would these actually create an entry/exit wound by BlueUnderwear · · Score: 2
    If effect, passing through something like a planet would probably take half its mass and at least some of its velocity as the energy is expended.

    If it left some matter behind, wouldn't that matter expand once it turned "normal"? And wouldn't said "materialization" of 500kg of ordinary matter in a tiny spot actually cause more damage as the passage itself?

    --
    Say no to software patents.
  70. Re:What about... by Xilman · · Score: 2, Informative

    "Uplets and downlets" are what we call "protons" and "neutrons. :-)

    All quarks have charges which are \pm 1e/3 or \pm 2e/3. Doesn't stop normal matter being stable. I think the suggestion is that the strangelets contain enough up and down quarks and (presumably) electrons to make the aggregate close to zero charge.

    Paul

    --
    Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate
  71. Re:Would these actually create an entry/exit wound by Xerithane · · Score: 4, Interesting

    In fact, IIRC exit wounds are larger primarily because of fragementation of the bullet and fragments of bones that get carried out with it. Entry wounds of course just reflect the cross-section of the bullet.

    I'm sure you have heard the expression "Hollow Point" in regards to ammunition rounds. The way that most ammo works is it mushrooms as it makes contact. Having a hollow point round means it mushrooms larger, and you also have rifling (which causes the bullet to spin) in some cases. This is the primary factor in exit wound sizes. The amount of tissue damage that is done is directly associated with the compression (force of the bullet, hydrostatic shock is what it is called, IIRC) of the bullet moving through, and the current size of the round (remember, after it makes contact it expands.)

    Most bullets do not fragment, unless they are designed to do so. I knew someone who had rifle rounds that had tips that were designed to break into eighths after contact with a hollow point center. The reason why I wouldn't worry about a pollen-size object travelling 900Kmph is because it's entrance and exit wounds would be nearly identical, because it's A) Going very fast, B) Very dense and C) theoretical :) I would worry about compression shock though, which would result in having a lot of bones break and lungs collapse and what not. Very mysterious death, I would say.

    --
    Dacels Jewelers can't be trusted.
  72. Re:out of curiosity... by _ph1ux_ · · Score: 2

    your sig makes me laugh every time i see it... whats it from?

  73. Re:Faster than light? by guttentag · · Score: 2

    IIRC, c is the speed of light as it travels in a vacuum. It's slower when passing through the atmosphere or water. So can we assume that if strangelets pass through the crust, core and mantle of the earth at 900,000 mph, they probably travelled even faster before reaching Earth?

  74. Why straight through? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Not quite sure, but from reading that it looked like they looked for earthquakes on exact opposite sides of the earth. If they just looked for earthquakes within a few seconds of each other, they would find hundreds, most likely.

    Wait a second. Who says the stragelet has to hit Earth at a 90 degree angle?

    Although I bet it would look VERY cool if it just skimed the surface of some city.... suddenly theres holes in the walls and a trail in the air, a few random people fall down.. would be very good for hollywood...

    1. Re:Why straight through? by WebMasterJoe · · Score: 2

      Actually, they weren't at 90 degree angles - one entered at Antarctica and left from the Indian Ocean, and one entered the Pacific and left through Antarctica. Odd that they both involved the South Pole, though - is it possible that the magnetism of the earth had an effect on them? It is considerably larger...

      I also have to wonder how they can calculate its speed to be 900,000 mph. Sure, if they measure the distance from its entry to its exit, and divide by the difference in time they could come up with a number. But that would imply that the Earth is sitting still in space. Instead, we're spinning and revolving, and the focus of our revolution (actually just one focus, since the path is elliptical) is in turn rotating and revolving, and moving away from the center of the universe too. What is that 900,000 mph in relation to? What if the particle was actually sitting still, and the total velocity of the Earth is actually 900,000 mph?

      Disclaimer: I am by no means an expert in physics, astronomy, geometry, grammar, or magnetism.

      --
      I really hate signatures, but go to my website.
  75. Re:Faster than light? by TheLink · · Score: 2

    AFAIK it's closer to 186,000 miles/per sec.

    Unless the physical "constant" has changed recently :).

    --
  76. Spontaneous Human Combustion by solarlips · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Hmmmm, maybe this explains spontaneous human combustion? I don't believe that people can spontaneously combust, perhaps they are just being hit by these strangelets...???

    Talk about an excedrin headache

  77. Esteemed scientific journal != Sunday Herald by shoppa · · Score: 3, Insightful
    The team analysed more than a million earthquake records for signs of strangelets hitting Earth, reports The Sunday Telegraph.

    Oooh, I'm sure the authors of the scientific paper had a tough bunch of high-energy-particle physicists at The Sunday Telegraph reviewing their submitted paper :-)

    I mean, it's nice to see something having to do with physics make the Sunday Paper (at least I'm not listening to the Joe Jackson song that disparages that media) but shouldn't we have slightly higher standards for something to make the Slashdot front page?

  78. Re:Faster than light? by Alsee · · Score: 2

    slower when passing through the atmosphere or water.

    Light slows down when passing through matter.

    So can we assume...strangelets...travelled even faster before reaching Earth?

    No. Matter doen dot slow down when passing through matter. A particle can actually go faster through matter than light can. It is exceding the reduced speed of the light, which is not a violation of exceding the normal speed of light.

    When a particle does this it generates a light cone, like the sonic boom a supersonic jet makes. (Hmmm, a photonic boom?) This is called Cherenkov radiation.

    The strange matter in the article is going fast, but still far short of the speed of light, so I doubt the issue actually comes up.

    -

    --
    - - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
  79. Re:Faster than light? by Alsee · · Score: 2

    arg, didn't notice my typo:

    Matter does not slow down when passing through matter.

    -

    --
    - - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
  80. Re:Would these actually create an entry/exit wound by Alsee · · Score: 2

    you'd never actually know that a pollen grain hole had been made through your body.

    While I agree the damge would be quite loalized, I'm sure you'd notice it :)

    You'd certainly hear it throught the air, and I can't imagine not feeling something from the internal shockwave.

    My advice is to avoid Antartica. These are strange particles, and that seems to be the only place they hit the Earth :)

    -

    --
    - - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
  81. Re:Faster than light? by darien · · Score: 2

    A mile is therefore also 1760 yards, which is easy to remember because there are 1760 sectors on an Amiga OFS floppy.

  82. Re:Would these actually create an entry/exit wound by bertok · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The problem with your estimate of the damage caused by a strangelet to a human being is that it is based on theories that only apply to projectiles made of normal matter. Strangelets are both extremely dense, and charged. To a strangelet, a human being would present a target as insubstantial as the foam in you bathtub is to you. However, any charged particles (electrons or protons) orbiting the strangelet would be stripped off, which would result in a huge potential difference between the strangelet and most of your body. In other words, you'll get electrocuted, and your body will be ripped apart by the rapidly changing electric and magnetic fields.

  83. Re:Faster than light? by renehollan · · Score: 2
    The speed of light is 186,282 mps, or miles per second, not hour, give or take. For those who like nice, round numbers, that's 299,975 km/s, or close enough to 300,000 km/s, for most illustrative purposes.

    Of course, that's in a vacuum. It propagates slower in a medium (which is why you have refractive effects at surface bounderies, and optical lenses work).

    --
    You could've hired me.
  84. Re:Entrance/Exit Point by IronChef · · Score: 2


    Thankfully, "unexplained clown" is only 2150 results.

  85. Re:Faster than light? by foobar104 · · Score: 2

    You're absolutely right. Thanks. My only defense: it was far, far too late to be posting on Slashdot.

    File that one under "guess what I'm thinking."

  86. Re:Would these actually create an entry/exit wound by rnd() · · Score: 2
    hillarious... oddly, that was the first thought that popped into my head when I read the headline.

    Seriously, couldn't this actually be the explanation?

    --

    Amazing magic tricks

  87. Re:What about... by quantaman · · Score: 2

    There are six types of quark: up, down, bottom, strange and charmed... wait... DAMM!!

    Sorry, I was so charmd by your post I just wrote down my "clever answer" and for some strange reason forgot to look back up top at your post to before writing. I'm just really messed up today, it must of been that strange drink that charming girl gave me last night after top server went down.

    --
    I stole this Sig
  88. Re:Would these actually create an entry/exit wound by warrior · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Perhaps this is a cause for the "spontaneous human combustion" phenomenon? It would leave no evidence as to what started the fire and would certainly appear quite spontaneously.

    --
    Intel transfer the difficult from Hadware to software, for get more power, programmer need more technology. -- chinaitn
  89. Interesting math by Pemdas · · Score: 2
    This story sounded a bit odd to me, so I ran some numbers:

    Generously assuming a 10-ton strangelet moving at 900,000 MPH, that strangelet has a kinetic energy of approximately 1.75 x 10^14 Joules, roughly equivalent to 25,000 tons of TNT.

    The story goes on to state that the entry impact released "several thousand tons of TNT" worth of energy. Let's be conservative here, and say that surface conversion was 3,000 tons of TNT. in the top 50 miles of the earth's crust.

    The strangelet would never have exited the earth, having expelled all it's energy on the interior!

    Unless I'm overlooking something pretty significant, either those strangelets must be moving at a bit faster clip, or must be quite a bit more massive to cause the sited effects.

  90. Re:Faster than light? by stevelinton · · Score: 2

    Nevertheless, current international standards define all the imperial units in terms of metric ones, so a mile is, by definition 1.609 2655 metres (or whatever it is). There is no standard mile, foot, inch or yard any more. The metre is defined by reference to the wavelength of a specific type of light amd the second by reference to the speed of light and the metre.

  91. With all the off-the-cuff calculations... by GMFTatsujin · · Score: 2

    I think this post points to the need for a new set of moderation comments.

    I mean, folks are whipping out statistics, back of the envelope calculations, and all kinds of wacky definitions -- I don't think any one person would be able to go through and verify all the claims made by posters, expert or not.

    I propose "Yeah, I'll Buy That," "Sounds Good to Me," or "I Think I Read That Once Too." Whether they're +1 or -1, I leave up to other folks...

    GMFTatsujin

  92. Re:Faster than light? by sweet+reason · · Score: 2

    you can convert any distance measurement to any other distance measurement but it still doesn't mean that one is defined in terms of the other

    but in this case, the inch is, in fact, officially defined in terms of centimeters. i don't know when that happened, but it was years ago.

    --
    Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler. -- A.E.
  93. This is very important for drivers by Aceticon · · Score: 2

    A whole new class of excuses for bad driving is born:

    - You Honor, i didn't willingly pass the red-light, a stranglet hit my car and pushed it through. I'm sure the microscopic size hole can be found.

  94. in other words... by shren · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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."

    In other words, various governmental sources have gotten tired of seismologists finding underground nuclear testing and told them to quit revealing the secrets. And they did.

    --
    Maybe the state's highest function is to grind out insoluble problems. (Zelazny, Hall of Mirrors)
  95. Re:Would these actually create an entry/exit wound by Jburkholder · · Score: 2

    Now if any instances of SHC were always at the time of an earthquake, you would have something!

  96. Re:Yes, yes I am. by Graspee_Leemoor · · Score: 2

    If light did travel around the earth 7 times in a second would it go back in time (Star Trek) or would we go back in time (Superman) ?

    graspee

  97. Re:Would these actually create an entry/exit wound by Jburkholder · · Score: 2

    Yeah, that might explain those mysterious earthquakes that alway coincide with SHC cases!

  98. Re:Would these actually create an entry/exit wound by rnd() · · Score: 2

    well, it could be that the hsg cases occurred from strangelets that passed within a few feet of the earth and hit a human but not the earth... good point though.

    --

    Amazing magic tricks

  99. cosmic rays more scary by peter303 · · Score: 2

    Because they are much more common and my turn your DNA into cancer. When you close your eyes and see random flashes of light - some of those are cosmic rays and some are just misfirings of nerve cells.

  100. Re:What about... by connorbd · · Score: 2

    I know -- isn't that the correct part of the ear to commence oo-mox?

    /brian

  101. Re:What about... by martyb · · Score: 2

    Once charmed by top-down programming, bottom-up programming seems strange.

  102. Re:What would happen if you hold one of these thin by ka9dgx · · Score: 2
    I was going to start doing the math, but it seems silly. Consider what happens when you stand next to a building, hill, etc... they weigh a lot, but have no noticable pull to them. The fact is, unless this thing sliced through you, you might hear the crack of the air as it whips by, possibly triggering a lightning strike, you might see the place where it hits the ground, but otherwise, you'd miss it unless you were warned and waiting for it.

    --Mike--

  103. Re:Dr. Strangelet by connorbd · · Score: 2

    Do you want ice-nine in your drink? I promise, it'll send chills up your spine...

    /Brian

  104. hard evidence? by jafac · · Score: 2

    ok, so they've supposedly recorded two of these "events" within a 10-year period. So, over the entire lifetime of the earth, we're talking about hundreds of millions of these events. So tell me. In the entire history of geology, has any geologist ever dug up a rock that had a tiny unexplained hole punched through it? I thought not.

    --

    These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
  105. Unexplained earthquake detection by Gunnery+Sgt.+Hartman · · Score: 2, Funny

    All of those "earthquakes" probably coincide with the time of the aerobics class at the nearest Fat Farm.

    --
    [ ]
  106. Re:Would these actually create an entry/exit wound by jpatters · · Score: 2

    Yet we never see a case where an SHC event is accompanied by mysterious dammage to nearby buildings. Hmm... I think I'll still go with the "wicking" explanation.

    --
    "Remember, there never were pineapple-almond cookies here."
  107. In Related News... by dbretton · · Score: 2

    Scientists at the SNO facililty have reported that their detector has sprung a leak!

  108. Re:Would these actually create an entry/exit wound by kesuki · · Score: 2

    Keep in mind that the planet earth has an awful lot holding it in place, while us fragile humans don't suffer that same benefit. Therfore when a stranglet hits a person it's not like hitting a tightly held sheet of paper. However, we're mostly water, and to a strangelet we're interchangable for water in terms of how easily it can pass through us. Unlike water though we can't just fill in the hole it bores through us, and bone might be sufficently dense enough to cause an exchange of energy.
    I'm thinking that a stranglet would transfer enough force to shatter any bone it passed through, as well as make a microscopic hole through any organs it passes through.
    Based on this article I'd say it's safe to assume that any damage caused by a strangelet would entirely depend on how much force it could transfer into the body while making any holes, especially while hitting any bones. Since obviously the two recorded strangelets transfered a sizemic force the size of several thousand tons of TNT. If that much force was transfered into a human all at once the only image that comes to mind is that of a paintball grenade exploding.
    Hopefully though since the earth's crust is miles thicker and much more dense than a human that the amount of force applied at any given moment would only be slightly more than the amount needed to make a hole.

    BTW, does anyone else here wonder if the person who named this was chewing a pack of chicklets when trying to think up a name?

    --
    https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
  109. Re:Would these actually create an entry/exit wound by jafac · · Score: 2

    If you look at high-speed photographs of rifle bullets passing through ballistic geletan, you'll see that fragmentation, mushrooming aside, high projectile velocities can still wreak serious damage on tissue through propagation of shock waves. A bullet only .30 inches in diameter fired from a rifle at close range can rupture arteries and connective tissue in a 6" diameter path.

    If you've ever seen the Zapruder footage, you know what I'm talking about.

    --

    These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
  110. Re:Strangelets are strange but not dangerous by SEWilco · · Score: 2
    No, his sample of two per year were not based only on perpendicular strangelet impacts. The article mentioned detection of two events which both went near the South Pole but went anywhere near the North Pole. Thus the approach angle is not relevant.

    Also, these events intersected the volume of the Earth. Neither surface area nor cross section. As we don't care much about damage done inside the Earth we are not particularly concerned with the chance of a certain cubic centimeter being hit (such as the exact center). So the chance of the entire surface area of the Earth being hit, at any angle, is a reasonable approximation.

    We also don't particularly care about the damage done inside a person, as any impact can be considered significant, so use the surface area of a person and calculate the ratio between impacts per Earth surface area to impacts per person surface area.

    As surface area increases fractally with decreasing scale of measurement, the surface area of a circle and the surface area of a cylinder are suitable.

    Do not cover the Earth with the additional volume of a person and try to calculate based on that, unless you really care about the chance of either you or the Earth being hit.

    Now go back the the back of your envelope and continue the exercise.

  111. stellar evidence? by mattr · · Score: 2
    IANA astrophysicist, but obviously these things
    are given their momentum, if not in fact created, in some major stellar process like a neutron star explosion or maybe even the Big Bang.


    What sort of things would you look for to try to find a source of such objects? How would they radiate or change fields through which they pass?
    What would a strangelet storm (tm) look like? Perhaps a wave of them would look like a gravitational field moving at relativistic speed?


    What about looking in the neighborhood of our own
    solar system for strangelets passing through perpendicular to the ecliptic? You might think they would interact with the Sun's surface and atmosphere, and create effects in high resolution images.

    1. Re:stellar evidence? by mattr · · Score: 2

      Also seems that we could find some strangelet sources by extending the line by which their paths intersect the surface of the earth and knowing where the earth was at the time.. Have these people tried to do so?

  112. Extraterrestrials maybe killed by strangelet jelly by mattr · · Score: 2

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=%2F news%2F2001%2F09%2F07%2Fnba07.xml

  113. Re:Faster than light? by BlaisePascal · · Score: 2

    I believe in the US, the mile is defined in terms of feet (1 mile = 5280 feet), feet defined in terms of inches (1 foot = 12 inches), inches in terms of centimeters (1 inch = 2.54 cm exactly), centimeters in terms of meters, and the meter is defined (since the early 80's, I believe) in terms of the second and the speed of light. The second is defined in terms of the frequency of hyperfine transitions of cesium-80, if I remember correctly.