Quark Stars and a New State of Matter?

[deleted]

Alan,

You didn't say exactly what you would do as Emperor of Einsteiniana. However, back to the topic here, "... when the temperature reaches the QCD energy scale (T of order 1012 kelvins) or the density rises to the point where the average inter-quark separation is less than 1 fm (quark chemical potential μ around 400 MeV), the hadrons are melted into their constituent quarks, and the strong interaction becomes the dominant feature of the physics. Such phases are called quark matter or QCD matter".

Then, "A neutron star is much cooler than 1012K, but it is compressed by its own weight to such high densities that it is reasonable to surmise that quark matter may exist in the core. Compact stars composed mostly or entirely of quark matter are called quark stars or strange stars, yet at this time no star with properties expected of these objects has been observed". Both from Wikipedia.

My questions: What is the general density requirement for quark matter formation? What is the pressure or density at earth's core? Can the gravitational attraction of the overlying earth mass squeeze the core to the extent that it meets the density requirements and the average inter-quark separation of less than 1 fm mentioned above?

Then related in another way, has the radius of the earth been changing or constant, i.e. has it increased or is it decreasing? This may have interesting consequences for pre-historic animals since a reduced gravitational field intensity (GM/r) in the past may make the task of motion easy no matter the gigantic size of such animals.

Akinbo

Jason Wolfe

Alan,

It sounds like Stephen Hawking and the physics community are confused about event horizons. I don't know what to say. I mean, I have my own pet theory about event horizons, but I'm an electronics technician, not a physicist. I look at oscilloscopes all day, so everything to me looks like waves.

The more I hear about how physicists are stumped by the ultimate "grand design", the more I think that life after death/ghosts/spooky stuff might actually be possible. I know how grim the physical world is, therefore, it would be inconceivable that something as joyful as an afterlife could even be possible. It is my belief that the ultimate grand design is most likely impossible to make sense of.

Alan Lowey

Jason,

"so everything to me looks like waves" very funny..

I believe in more 'spooky' stuff than the average scientist. There's much more to reality than meets the eye, I'm sure.

Alan

Alan Lowey

Akinbo,

I'm not going to try and work out the numbers. It makes sense to me to think of spinning SQM being created at the beginning with baryonic matter which then becomes the seeds of formation of celestial bodies.

As to the gigantic sized animals of the past, this relates to the SQM core tidal model of the 100ky ice age cycle. The equatorial tides increase on the 100ky cycle. These create greater precipitation at the polar regions which leads to glacial build-up and loss of albedo. The counter to this is that extra tide raising forces also brings nutrients to the surface. This then changes the chemistry of the atmosphere. Bacterial particles from surface algae released into the air be seeds for rainfall. Despite the colder global temperatures, warmer coastal seas would exist at high latitudes. More rainfall would occur globally. Deserts would become grasslands. This is my off-the-cuff explanation for ice age megafauna.

Alan

Jason Wolfe

Alan,

"There's much more to reality than meets the eye, I'm sure."

I agree. GR QM afterlife/ghosts/spirits = cannot be unified.

Alan Lowey

Jason,

how do you feel about the suggestion that strange quark matter exists at the center of the Earth?

Alan

Alan Lowey

Incidentally, I had the thought that the so-called North American ice age corridor could actually have been coastal rather than in-land due to the warmer seas at higher latitudes due to increase ocean currents.

Ice Age Migration

Looking at the clovis sites, this hypothesis favors the Atlantic coastal route.

Solutrean hypothesisAttachment #1: clovis_sites.jpg

Jason Wolfe

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?

Jason Wolfe

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.

Alan Lowey

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

Jason Wolfe

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.

Alan Lowey

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]

Jason Wolfe

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.

Alan Lowey

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

Alan Lowey

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

Jason Wolfe

Alan,

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

Jason Wolfe

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

Alan Lowey

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

Alan Lowey

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.

Alan Lowey

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]

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