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 "

Comments

Doesn't add up...

[Mike Schiraldi]

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?

Re:Doesn't add up...

[Liquor]

It's pretty obvious that the article has the amount of time wrong. The suggestion of speed given by the article is that the particles might travel at about 400 Km/s, and this particular track apparently went in near a pole and came out near the equator - a rough guess (somebody else can do the actual spherical trig.) is 8500 Km of travel through the earth, and at 400 Km/s that's about 21 seconds, which is on the close order of the 27 seconds you noted from the map.

Now if it WAS .73 of a second, then the alleged particle was travelling close to 12,000 Km/s - 4% of lightspeed - I suspect that 400 Km/s is more in tune with both the energies (not) observed, and the (escape) velocity that could be imparted by falling into the solar system from interstellar space. (At least, either way, it sounds like this one won't be coming back.)

So where did it come from?

[mengel]

Okay, so we know where it came in, and where it went out, and fairly precisely what time it was... So then you are in a pretty good position to extrapolate the path of the object backwards, and figure out where it came from, right? If it was moving at 400km/h, its patj would have been warped somewhat by the sun's gravitation, but that should be able to be figured in. Then you should point all your best telescopes off in the direction that it must have come from, and see what's there.

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?

quark@home?

[TarPitt]

They looked at more than a million records collected by the US Geological Survey between 1990 to 1993 that were not associated with traditional seismic disturbances, such as Earthquakes

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?

Re:Spontaneous human combustion?

[Jboy_24]

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.

here's an explanation

[SHEENmaster]

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.

Re:Not a whole hell of a lot.

[Wiwi Jumbo]

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? :)