Alan,

I encourage the use of imagination to explore every nook and cranny of physics; in fact I use it myself quite often. But I see two problems with the idea that it's at the center of the earth. First, it takes the pressure equivalent of a neutron star to get strange quark matter. Second, if there was quark matter, wouldn't it raise the average density of the earth to some higher density then just molten iron and bedrock?

But the idea that stars at the center of the galaxy have quark matter inside of them and are really heavier than we thought has merit as a way of explaining some dark matter.

Yes, you get the general idea. Now just imagine that strange quark matter (SQM) was created at the beginning along with baryonic matter.

Wouldn't strange quark matter have a decay rate if freed from the crushing weight of a neutron star? In other words, severe gravitational pressures (or the quark epoch of the big bang) might be enough to create strange quarks, but if that pressure is removed (by the expansion of the universe) then strange quarks are unstable and would decay into up and down quarks.

No, Prof Ed Witten calculated that they would be *more* stable than baryonic matter.

[quote]

Astrophysicists can thank string theorist Edward Witten for quark stars. In 1984, he hypothesised that protons and neutrons may not be the most stable forms of matter.

Both are made of two types of smaller entities, known as quarks: protons are comprised of two "up" quarks and one "down" quark, whereas neutrons are made of two downs and one up. Up and down are the lightest of six distinct "flavours" of quark. Add the third lightest to the mix and you get something called strange quark matter. Witten argued that this kind of matter may have lower net energy and hence be more stable than nuclear matter made of protons and neutrons.

[end quote]

Hi Alan,

What has to be added to keep strange quark matter from decaying?

By the way, I was watches a TV series on Netflicks made by Animal Planet called The Haunted. These episodes are the most convincing of anything I've seen so far that ghosts and hauntings can happen in our reality. I can see how a ghost might add something to allow strange/charmed quarks to become stable for a bring time so that they can interact with us. Anyway, I highly recommend watching the series: the Haunted.

Hi Jason,

Nothing needs to be added. See the opening paragraphs at the top of the page:

Edward Farhi, an MIT physicist who researched strangelets, says that if two strange stars collided, they could send strange matter careening toward Earth. "If you had a little lump on the table, it would just sit there," says Farhi. (See, "Should I be afraid of strange matter?")

Okay, thanks for the tip. I'm more inclined to believe in cryptozoology than ghosts, but I'm open to the possibility. I actually believe these peoples' stories to a degree at least:

Cryptozoology News

Alan

I had a left-field idea: could strange quarks exist at the center of baryonic atoms?

Alan,

Are you saying that strange quark matter is really dark marter and invisible so we dont see it?

Star explodes, collapses into neutron star, then again into a quark star. I think ive got it.

Jason,

Yep, I'm saying that strange quark matter (SQM) is the candidate for 'dark matter' but we don't see it because it exists at the center of moons, planets, stars and galactic centers. Spiral galaxy rotation can therefore be easily explained if the SQM at the galactic center is gravitational anisotropic due to fast rotation and exerts a greater SQM to SQM gravitational influence on the galactic plane. Similarly with the stars themselves.

Alan

That's the basics, yes. I'm also speculating that strange quark matter (SQM) would have been formed just after the Big Bang along with regular protons and neutrons and become the seeds of formation of all the celestial bodies.

Exotic orbit for the largest Trojan asteroid -- the only one known to possess a moon (Feb 27 2014)

This is a classic case of strange quark matter at play imo.

[quote]The research, conducted with expert assistance from colleagues at the Institut de Mécanique Céleste et de Calcul des Éphémérides (IMCCE) of the Observatoire de Paris, revealed that the 12 km moon orbits the large 250 km asteroid every 3 days at a distance of 600 km in an ellipse inclined almost 45 degrees with respect to the asteroid's equator.

"The orbit of the moon is elliptical and tilted relative to the spin of Hektor, which is very different from other asteroids with satellites seen in the main-belt," said Matija Cuk, coauthor and scientist at the Carl Sagan Center of the SETI Institute. "However, we did computer simulations, which include Hektor being a spinning football shape asteroid and orbiting the Sun, and we found that the moon's orbit is stable over billions of years."

Hektor has been known since the 1970s to be spinning rapidly (less than 7 hours) and extremely elongated. Using the high angular resolution of the Keck II telescope, combined with a large number of photometric observations taken since 1957, the team built a refined shape hoping to get a clue to the origin of the system.

"We built several models of equal quality from the photometric data, but we favored a model made of two lobes since some of the best adaptive optics observations suggest that the Trojan asteroid has a dual structure," said Josef Durech, co-author and researcher at the Charles University in Prague.[end quote]

Spiral galaxy with Streaks Of Blue (Mar 4 2014)

My interpretation of this phenomenon is that the galaxy within the cluster passing 'face-on' across an anisotropic quark plane from a larger galactic center or the plane of the Great Attractor itself. See below. This then has the strongest influence on the most anisotropic quark matter cores i.e. those of young stars.

The rather obscure mainstream explanation is as follows:

This new Hubble image shows ESO 137-001, a galaxy located in the southern constellation of Triangulum Australe (The Southern Triangle) -- a delicate and beautiful spiral galaxy, but with a secret.

This image not only captures the galaxy and its backdrop in stunning detail, but also something more dramatic -- intense blue streaks streaming outwards from the galaxy, seen shining brightly in ultraviolet light.

These streaks are actually hot young stars, encased in wispy streams of gas that are being torn away from the galaxy by its surroundings as it moves through space

So far so good:

This violent galactic disrobing is due to a process known as ram pressure stripping -- a drag force felt by an object moving through a fluid [1]. The fluid in question here is superheated gas, which lurks at the centres of galaxy clusters.

This image also shows other telltale signs of this process, such as the curved appearance of the disc of gas and dust -- a result of the forces exerted by the heated gas. The cluster's drag may be strong enough to bend ESO 137-001, but in this cosmic tug-of-war the galaxy's gravitational pull is strong enough to hold on to the majority of its dust -- although some brown streaks of dust displaced by the stripping are visible.

Studying ram pressure stripping helps astronomers to better understand the mechanisms that drive the evolution of galaxies. For example, it will leave this galaxy with very little of the cold gas that is essential for star formation, rendering the galaxy effectively incapable of forming new stars.

This next part suggests that the Great Attractor is quark matter imo:

ESO 137-001 is part of the Norma Cluster, a cluster of galaxies near the centre of the Great Attractor, a region of space that earned its name by being so massive, and having a gravitational pull so strong, that it is pulling entire galaxy clusters towards it. This region is located around 200 million light-years from our galaxy, the Milky Way. Both our galaxy and its home group, the Local Group, are slowly being hauled towards this mysterious region. Hubble also imaged ESO 137-001's neighbour, ESO 137-002, which is also known to have a hot tail of gas extending outwards into space (potw1302).

    Did dark matter kill the dinosaurs? Maybe is wonderfully relevant to the idea of exotic strange quark matter existing at the center of the sun and galactic center. The 35 million year solar cycle through the dark matter 'disc' is directly analogous to the idea of additional tidal forcing on the earth's 100ky ice age cycle through the plane of angular momentum of the solar system. This would give an additional mechanism for the demise of the dinosaurs as the consequences of extreme tidal forcing at the center of the sun.