Strange Matter

Hello!

You probably know about the three states of matter (or four if you were the teacher's pet), which are solid, liquid, gas and plasma. Now, you might think that these states comprise of all of the normal "baryonic" matter in the universe. However, very few people know about "quark (chromodynamic) matter" and even fewer have heard of "strange matter". It turns out that this type of matter is one of the most interesting state of matter and how we might, just might have entire stars made of this type of matter.

In your normal states of matter, we have atoms, which consists of electrons and a dense nucleus, which are comprised of "baryons" known as neutrons and protons. In those particles, we can find so-called up quarks and down quarks with fractional charges of +2/3 and -1/3 respectively held by the strong interaction. However, in extreme pressures, the quarks actually separate and become free. It essentially becomes something similar to plasma but instead of free nuclei in the plasma state, we have free quarks!

That is one of the main reasons the most common source of quark matter is in the cores of neutron star, the energetic dead remnants of large stars.

One of the strangest (both literally and figuratively) quarks is known as the strange quark. It is usually found in baryons such as kaon, Sigma baryon and D mesons with the strangeness flavor (Yes, that is a physics term). Strange quarks are not found naturally as of the current date however is hypothesized to be found in "strange stars", an entire star made with a type of QCD matter known as strange matter. However, strange stars is a type of another form of strange matter.

Feynman diagram created in feynman.aivazis.com

This diagram shows the decay of a kaon, a baryon with a strange quark.

The more interesting form of strange matter is known as "strangelets". It consists of a equal mixture of up, down and strange quarks. It can be from a few femtometers (around the size of a nucleus) to kilometers. At that point, the strangelets are known as a strange star. People have theorized that strangelets could be the key to solving the dark matter equation.

One of the most dangerous qualities of strange matter is that if a large strangelet, which is usually quite stable interacts with ordinary matter, the ordinary matter turns into strange matter. So, if a strangelet hits Earth, it could potentially convert the Earth into a mix of up, down and strange quarks, essentially annihilating the entire Earth!

However, the strangelet theory is still a theory and has not been experimentally proven, which might be good or bad based on how you view it.

Well, today has been a very strange blog (or article, I don't even know anymore) so I'll leave you to it.

Thanks for reading!