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Hub AI
Strangelet AI simulator
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Hub AI
Strangelet AI simulator
(@Strangelet_simulator)
Strangelet
A strangelet (pronounced /ˈstreɪndʒ.lɪt/) is a hypothetical particle consisting of a bound state of roughly equal numbers of up, down, and strange quarks. An equivalent description is that a strangelet is a small fragment of strange matter, small enough to be considered a particle. The size of an object composed of strange matter could, theoretically, range from a few femtometers across (with the mass of a light nucleus) to arbitrarily large. Once the size becomes macroscopic (on the order of metres across), such an object is usually called a strange star. The term "strangelet" originates with Edward Farhi and Robert Jaffe in 1984. It has been theorized that strangelets can convert matter to strange matter on contact. Strangelets have also been suggested as a dark matter candidate.
The known particles with strange quarks are unstable. Because the strange quark is heavier than the up and down quarks, it can spontaneously decay, via the weak interaction, into an up quark. Consequently, particles containing strange quarks, such as the lambda particle, always lose their strangeness, by decaying into lighter particles containing only up and down quarks.
However, condensed states with a larger number of quarks might not suffer from this instability. That possible stability against decay is the "strange matter hypothesis", proposed separately by Arnold Bodmer and Edward Witten. According to this hypothesis, when a large enough number of quarks are concentrated together, the lowest energy state is one which has roughly equal numbers of up, down, and strange quarks, namely a strangelet. This stability would occur because of the Pauli exclusion principle; having three types of quarks, rather than two as in normal nuclear matter, allows more quarks to be placed in lower energy levels.
A nucleus is a collection of a number of up and down quarks (in some nuclei a fairly large number), confined into triplets (neutrons and protons). According to the strange matter hypothesis, strangelets are more stable than nuclei, so nuclei are expected to decay into strangelets. But this process may be extremely slow because there is a large energy barrier to overcome: as the weak interaction starts making a nucleus into a strangelet, the first few strange quarks form strange baryons, such as the Lambda, which are heavy. Only if many conversions occur almost simultaneously will the number of strange quarks reach the critical proportion required to achieve a lower energy state. This is very unlikely to happen, so even if the strange matter hypothesis were correct, nuclei would never be seen to decay to strangelets because their lifetime would be longer than the age of the universe.
The stability of strangelets depends on their size, because of
Although nuclei do not decay to strangelets, there are other ways to create strangelets, so if the strange matter hypothesis is correct there should be strangelets in the universe. There are at least three ways they might be created in nature:
These scenarios offer possibilities for observing strangelets. If strangelets can be produced in high-energy collisions, then they might be produced by heavy-ion colliders. Similarly, if there are strangelets flying around the universe, then occasionally a strangelet should hit Earth, where it may appear as an exotic type of cosmic ray; alternatively, a stable strangelet could end up incorporated into the bulk of the Earth's matter, acquiring an electron shell proportional to its charge and hence appearing as an anomalously heavy isotope of the appropriate element—though searches for such anomalous "isotopes" have, so far, been unsuccessful.
At heavy ion accelerators like the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), nuclei are collided at relativistic speeds, creating strange and antistrange quarks that could conceivably lead to strangelet production. The experimental signature of a strangelet would be its very high ratio of mass to charge, which would cause its trajectory in a magnetic field to be very nearly, but not quite, straight. The STAR collaboration has searched for strangelets produced at the RHIC, but none were found. The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is even less likely to produce strangelets, but searches are planned for the LHC ALICE detector.
Strangelet
A strangelet (pronounced /ˈstreɪndʒ.lɪt/) is a hypothetical particle consisting of a bound state of roughly equal numbers of up, down, and strange quarks. An equivalent description is that a strangelet is a small fragment of strange matter, small enough to be considered a particle. The size of an object composed of strange matter could, theoretically, range from a few femtometers across (with the mass of a light nucleus) to arbitrarily large. Once the size becomes macroscopic (on the order of metres across), such an object is usually called a strange star. The term "strangelet" originates with Edward Farhi and Robert Jaffe in 1984. It has been theorized that strangelets can convert matter to strange matter on contact. Strangelets have also been suggested as a dark matter candidate.
The known particles with strange quarks are unstable. Because the strange quark is heavier than the up and down quarks, it can spontaneously decay, via the weak interaction, into an up quark. Consequently, particles containing strange quarks, such as the lambda particle, always lose their strangeness, by decaying into lighter particles containing only up and down quarks.
However, condensed states with a larger number of quarks might not suffer from this instability. That possible stability against decay is the "strange matter hypothesis", proposed separately by Arnold Bodmer and Edward Witten. According to this hypothesis, when a large enough number of quarks are concentrated together, the lowest energy state is one which has roughly equal numbers of up, down, and strange quarks, namely a strangelet. This stability would occur because of the Pauli exclusion principle; having three types of quarks, rather than two as in normal nuclear matter, allows more quarks to be placed in lower energy levels.
A nucleus is a collection of a number of up and down quarks (in some nuclei a fairly large number), confined into triplets (neutrons and protons). According to the strange matter hypothesis, strangelets are more stable than nuclei, so nuclei are expected to decay into strangelets. But this process may be extremely slow because there is a large energy barrier to overcome: as the weak interaction starts making a nucleus into a strangelet, the first few strange quarks form strange baryons, such as the Lambda, which are heavy. Only if many conversions occur almost simultaneously will the number of strange quarks reach the critical proportion required to achieve a lower energy state. This is very unlikely to happen, so even if the strange matter hypothesis were correct, nuclei would never be seen to decay to strangelets because their lifetime would be longer than the age of the universe.
The stability of strangelets depends on their size, because of
Although nuclei do not decay to strangelets, there are other ways to create strangelets, so if the strange matter hypothesis is correct there should be strangelets in the universe. There are at least three ways they might be created in nature:
These scenarios offer possibilities for observing strangelets. If strangelets can be produced in high-energy collisions, then they might be produced by heavy-ion colliders. Similarly, if there are strangelets flying around the universe, then occasionally a strangelet should hit Earth, where it may appear as an exotic type of cosmic ray; alternatively, a stable strangelet could end up incorporated into the bulk of the Earth's matter, acquiring an electron shell proportional to its charge and hence appearing as an anomalously heavy isotope of the appropriate element—though searches for such anomalous "isotopes" have, so far, been unsuccessful.
At heavy ion accelerators like the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), nuclei are collided at relativistic speeds, creating strange and antistrange quarks that could conceivably lead to strangelet production. The experimental signature of a strangelet would be its very high ratio of mass to charge, which would cause its trajectory in a magnetic field to be very nearly, but not quite, straight. The STAR collaboration has searched for strangelets produced at the RHIC, but none were found. The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is even less likely to produce strangelets, but searches are planned for the LHC ALICE detector.