I'm not sure if I should post this in the earth science category or this one... BBC news reports that a group of researchers believe that two seismic events in 1993 may have been caused by super-dense quark matter passing through the earth http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/2502755.stm
forgot to include questions I was wondering if anyone who has a better grasp of the science involved than I do(meaning just about anyone at all) could comment on whether this makes sense and if it does what the likelyhood of this happening frequently is?
It's bullshit. The heaviest strange particle is the omega-minus, with a mass of 1.672 GeV, or 2.976 x 10^-27 kg. The particles also have a lifetime of 10^-17 seconds. (The Particle Oddysey, Close, Martin, Sutton) The most energetic cosmic rays ever detected have energies of roughly 50 J. (Bird, Cobato, Dai, Fly's Eye Detector, Utah) This is the kinetic energy of a 1 kg baseball moving at 10 m/s (44 mi/hr). There has never been any evidence that cosmic ray particles come in "bunches." In other words, the largest cosmic rays ever observed have energies similar to a poorly-thrown basebell, and particles of such energy are only encountered once every few years. There is no way, in my scientific opinion, that cosmic rays of strange particles would have any noticeable impact whatsoever on observational seismology. - Warren
