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Quark Matter Blamed for Paired 1993 Seismic Events
Ethanon writes "In an article posted by BBC, scientists have suggested that two "unassociated" seismic events that occurred in 1993 were actually strange Quark matter passing through the Earth at a speed of perhaps 250 miles per second. A spec of strange Quark matter the size of a human cell is said to be so dense that it could weigh a tonne! Check it out
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The graphic at the top says that the Oct 22, 1993 particle entered at 09:55:47 and left at 09:56:14. That's 27 seconds.
The article says, "One event occurred on 22 October, 1993, when, according to the researchers, something entered the Earth off Antarctica and left it south of India 0.73 of a second later."
Which is it?
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Mod up a post Rob doesn't like and you'll never mod again
Unfortunately, the seismography data that is not associated with earthquakes stopped being collected by the USGS (or at least, is not archived) since 1993.
:)
I suspect that funding an archive for this data would be far less expensive than the huge particle physics machines that are searching for similar matter
Not to mention - it might just be worth calculating the orbital path of the particles that were (or might be) detected, just to make sure that they aren't coming back. Given the energy they apparently release, this could even be an alternate explanation for the Tunguska explosion in Siberia. (Other than exploding meteorites that don't leave a crater, and a misfire of Tesla's Death Ray.)
Liquor
Sanity is a highly overrated commodity.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Seriously though: can we detect if some civilisation wrecker size thingy is on its way.
These are sneaky bastards: more devious than NEOs come out at us in the direction of the Sun.
And we cannot even drill a nuke into these suckers.
Hmmmm.... that lifeboat thingy (posted yday) grows more pertinent by the minute.
Any good amateur rocket/astronomy folks out there? If you shot something from Antartica opposite the direction of the tip of India at 450km/sec, on October 22, 1993, 09:55:57 GMT, where would it go?
- "History shows again and again how nature points out the folly of men" -- Blue Oyster Cult, 'Godzilla'
I figure it this way: the article was talking about a body the size of a human cell, going at some outrageous speed. If a single one of your red blood cells suddenly decided to go an a supersonic hiatus (or, I don't know, maybe an aunt died, and it inherited a bundle of momentum) it would rip through the wall of whatever artery it was in at the time, continue through your body, and escape through the skin. Question is, what kind of hole would it leave behind? I would think a sort-of cell-sized one, and the hole wouldn't last for long, because the rubbery substance your body is made of would just splooch, microscopically, back in place. The hole almost certainly wouldn't be big enough, nor last long enough, for other blood cells to follow: i.e., it wouldn't bleed.
All in all, you probably wouldn't even feel it, or if you did, it'd be a sort of "huh? what was that? oh well, must be getting old" sort of feeling.
As for the seismic trace: that was several kilometers of decidedly non-sploochy stuff.
On the other hand, I don't *really* have a clue (as you probably gathered), and it might just be an explanation, finally, for spontaneous human combustion.
yes, we have no bananas
Ok I'll know I'll get modded down but ...
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.
I don't know, a slug of lead going only a couple times the speed of sound that is less than 3mm across and weighs about 1.5 grams can do a hell of a lot of damage.
.22 caliber hunting rifle round.
I'd imagine something weighing a ton, going that fast, would cause an order of magnitude more damage than the aforementioned
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
I'm not sure where you learned the scientific method, but I recall "Come up with a hypothesis" as the number one step. A hypothesis is not a conclusion, otherwise there is no point to going through the rest of the experiment.
These guys could use some help. Here's my idea: Put the information on line, distribute a client to analyze it. Surely the possibility of a quark collision is at least as good as finding an intelligent signal from another planet?
If your children ever found out how lame you are, they'd murder you in your sleep
I'm no physicist, but I would have to agree with you here. My only question would be - in order for it to cause a small earthquake, how much Earth do you think it would have to go through? I only ask because if an earthquake was detected on the surface... let's say a few miles deep into it, then it could put off a lot of energy in only a few miles right? So, I would still think you would notice if it hit you... maybe that explains random muscle twitches every now and then as I sit and program. Or maybe that's the massive amount of caffine that I have ingested.
There is a problem in that we don't know what the likelihood of one of these particles hitting earth is (much less of it hitting a person). The study registers very few cases, but it can hardly be said to be very extensive or conclusive (or even correct).
Anyways, when new, previously unknown phenomena is theorized or observed, it is always a good idea to look for prior evidence or see if it can explain other things, even if they were at some time dismissed as lunatics' ravings. An excellent example of this can be found in this recently posted article about a theory that would provide a reasonable explanation to the accounts of witnesses that said they heard sounds produced by meteorites instantly (when they saw them).
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Overcaffeinated. Angry geeks.
I believe that in most cases 'Spontanious Human Combustion' it has been shown that the person died from a slow burn of their fat in an oxygen depleted atmosphere. Most = 99%.
In these cases, the person was always
a) alone
b) in a closed room
c) smoking or near a lit fire
d) either intoxicated to the point of unconciousness or already dead from natural causes
e) Mildly to Fully Obese
f) Room has heavy waxy soot on ceiling or high points of the wall
In fact because of the extremely high rate of intoxication among the victums it was thought at one point they died from the alcholol in the blood stream combusting.
What happened really was:
a) Person passes out
b) Cigarette or Fire catches clothing on fire
c) Due to lack of oxygen fire become a slow burn
d) fat from body melts from fire
e) clothing uses molten fat as fuel, ie a human candle
While the heat is strong at the point of the burn, it doesn't turn into a huge fire, thus the lack of damage to other features in the room.
THus, in the end, no Paranormal activties needed.
Think of the probability bell curve. If we can have such quark matter of that size pass through even once a millennium, we should have enough smaller samples per hour that we can detect with all the equipment looking at the skies. The giant Kamiokande and Sudbury detectors would surely detect even tiny quantities of quark clumps, should I dare say single quarks? No the skies have been clear of such powerful thingies unless a single quark can cause earthquakes, THEN we can say the chances of them hitting the earth are so small, that we only had one in 93.
Secondly there have been enough earthquakes in earth-quake recorded history that we can expect almost simultaneous quakes sometime. The source that emitted even one quark of that much power towards us is likely a stellar event, sending more than one of these quarks or quarklumps. We should have had a series of earthquakes just like the leonids.
Thirdly, as I imagine tiny centers of enormous gravity, me thinks it should really break the rigid structure of rocks and other crystal-like things. Say we have one tonne of mass, on how much area should we put it to have enough pressure to crush rocks?? I think a little under a square inch. Therefore a little circle of this ballpark size can be discovered (assuming the material was about a tonne's worth of mass. If more, we get lucky with a bigger powdery circle). The circle would be dark with a burn and so easily noticed. Then again, shockwaves would move enough earth (if the can cause an earthquake)to form little mound circle.
This is just one of those junk pieces of news that get media attention since the physics behind it is so beautiful and believable. The publics appetite is wet for major scientific discoveries after a centurys bullish discoveries and a decade's slump.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
It's like saying f'(x) = df/dx is 0 because df is almost zero... you are neglecting the very important fact that dx is almost zero too.
Not really, he is saying that while the things have a hell of a lot of momentum (3e11 Newton seconds) it's impact area would be incredible small (smaller than a hydrogen atom in diameter) so it would just blast through a person without transfering its momentum to more than the cells it went through. So when it exits the individual it has left a wake, but a small one because of its incredible velocity.
This isn't billiards, where a ball transfers all its momentum to another, and it isn't like an ice burg where the oil station must be obliterated for passage. At 3e8 m/s it would pass through a meter of flesh in 1/3e8 seconds transfering energy to a few cells with very little mass themselves.
That's why he didn't think it would significantly damage a person. The Earth was both dense enough and large(volume) enough to take the blast.
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
Wouldn't that mean there should be a "impact point" where it hit?
:)
Something that we'd be able to see?
Then again, what the hell do I know?
Wiwi
"I trust in my abilities,
but I want more then they offer"
Nope cause bullets are traveling very very very slow compared to the speeds these are supposedly traveling, remember they say something like 250 miles per SECOND not per hour.
This would go through you soo fast your body wouldn't even have a chance to react much less explode, etc. The internal combustion thing is the only possibility here for damage... just from the shere amount of friction heat generated as it passed through you.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
Bullets leave a bigger hole on the way out because they're (usually) made of lead, which is soft, and they get mushed and expand as they travel through the object. A bullet that has gone through something doesn't look anywhere near the same as it did before it was fired.
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"Karma can only be portioned out by the cosmos." - Homer Simpson [1F10]