Recent theoretical work suggests that negative strangelets might be created at the LHC.

http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-ph/0512112

click on link, click on PDF file

The LHC 'safety study' argued against a runaway fusion potential for strangelets, postulated to be creatable due to their greater inherent nuclear stability than Iron (Z=26), by arguing that the "Coulomb Barrier" would prevent a positively charged strangelet from approaching close enough to the positively charged Helium nuclei found in great abundance at super-conducting colliders. Their predicted short half-lifes (predicted to be very radioactive at low A, on the order of milliseconds) would thus not allow for them to exist long enough to pose a threat.

Of course, there is little liquid Helium on the moon, and hence strangelets created in nature on the moon would not fuse with that low-A natural nuclear material on the moon, since it is not present other than as possible rare He-3 in very small abundance, and certainly not 'at depth', which is where a fast-moving strangelet created on the moon would end up, decaying back into normal matter long before it ever encountered Helium.

Now, these respected theorists are predicting the possible potential to create negatively charged strangelets.

G.X. Peng, X.J.Wen, and Y.D. Chen, of the China Center of Advanced Science (World Lab.) [Beijing], the Institute of High Energy Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences [Beijing], and the Center for Theoretical Physics MIT [Cambridge], respectively, have published a paper entitled:

"New Solutions for the Color-Flavored Locked Strangelets"

Their recent (December 9, 2005) well-written paper, supported by strong mathematical argument and with extensive usage of numerous graphs, and with numerous (26) strong reference-citations, argues that not only positively charged strangelets might be created, but negatively charged strangelets as well.

They found solutions in which at low A, the Z was negative, and as the A increased, the Z approached zero from the negative side. However, they did still find that the postive strangelets were slightly more stable than the negative strangelets, but that both are much more stable than normal nuclear matter, which is the most stable at Z = 26 (Iron).

Hence, the question thus is raised, is it possible to create a negative strangelet at the LHC which would then engage in a runaway fusion reaction with the low A liquid Helium in copious abundance initially, until its A were large enough to engage in runaway fusion with any normal nuclear matter?

Those conditions do not exist on the moon, and high-Z on high-Z collisions do not occur on the sun to create such strangelets, and this is a theoretical prediction not covered by the existing LHC "safety study", which also glossed over the possibility that even positively charged strangelets can approach near enough to low-A/low-Z material such as liquid Helium to possibly engage in fusion, due to the much stronger fusion potential for strange matter fusion compared to normal nuclear fusion.

While these theorists have 'concluded' that a runaway fusion will not occur ("However, they are unable to transform our planet into a strange star for the following two reasons"), their reasons do not appear to be entirely valid. Specifically, they too have concluded that the negative strangelets would transform into a more stable positive strangelet ["First, the positively charged slet-1 is the energy minimum for the same parameters"], and that the Coulomb barrier would be sufficient to prevent fusion with positive nuclei [which is what keeps normal low-Z matter from fusing with itself]. However, that assumption might not be valid, as we know that some spontaneous D-2/D-3 fusion does occur, and with the much greater energy well of the strangelet, that fusion might occur much more prodigiously, even with He-4 initially.

Their additional brush-off of converting Earth into a strange star is in their one-sentence assertion that their type of postulated strangelet only expands in A until a certain size (the electron wave-length, 386 fm), whereupon it ceases to expand. However, perhaps it converts into the other type of strangelet predicted by other theorists to continuously engage in fusion without stop.

In any event, their paper raises many new questions.

My questions would be this:

1) Are there any postulated ways to create strangelets in nature?

2) If so, would their effects be observable and identifiable as due to strangelet activity?

3) Is there indeed any way to identify a "strangelet star" or other object by current observational means?

The postulated methods do not necessarily result in detectable strangelets.

It is postulated that high-Z cosmic rays impacting on high-Z materials on the moon mimic the collider experiments. The moons surfaced, however is stationary, resulting in any such strangelets moving relative to the moon, traveling inwards at nearly the speed of light. If neutral, they might pass all the way through. If charged, they'd only go a few cm.

Such strangelets are predicted to be highly radioactive, with half-lifes on the order of microseconds to milliseconds.

There does not appear to be anyway to detect that scenario from Earth.

Likewise, high-Z cosmic rays impacting in head-on collisions in deep space are postulated to possibly create strangelets; again they would decay back to normal matter before encountering any additional material.

Strange stars would not have the absorption lines of normal stars, due to the absence of elements (normal nuclear matter).

Strange matter is usually called SQM (Strange-Quark Matter) due to the presence of equal numbers of strange-quarks with the up and down quarks.

The signature of a strangelet created at a collider would be its high A/Z ratio compared to normal nuclear matter. If its neutral, it would not be detectable.

Thus far, all searches for charged SQM at the RHIC have proved fruitless. It is not known if the RHIC has produced neutral strangelets.

Unlike runaway fission in an A-bomb, runaway fusion in a strangelet would initially be nearly linear. It takes time for the strangelet to absorb normal nuclear matter, 'burp' out the excess charge (electron, positron, or possibly via electron-capture like with I-125), and be able to fuse anew. It might literally take millenia for a single strangelet to grow to the size of a pea. Hopefully, the RHIC has not made neutral strangelets, and the LHC won't make neutral or negative strangelets, or positive ones that engage in fusion despite the "Coulomb barrier".

Hi Walter

What do you think of the experiment at Rhic described in Sci Am in which a mass of usd quarks in deconfined state acted as a superfluid, absorbin matter and living a billion times more than expected, before exploding? Horatiu nastase thought it was a black hole:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4357613.stm
In my opinion it was a strangelet just in the border of stabilty described by the chinese team. If so cern would make them definitely stable. whats your opinion?

Alvatros:

Welcome to Sciforums. You chose an interesting area for your first post.

Yes, I've read of the RHIC work, and the belief they created a mini black hole. I postulated that such might be created at RHIC, but that they would be relatively harmless (decaying in a burst of Hawking radiation before moving even an Angstrom away from the point of creation, while traveling at near the speed of light). That work tends to support my suggestion, which was published in Scientific American at the time, though my suggestion that mini-black-holes that rapidly evaporate via Hawking radiation might be creatable was derided by many as impossible. Since then, theory has caught up with my suggestion, and it is likewise postulated that mini-black-holes might be created at the LHC. However, I still might be wrong, and the lifetimes of more massive LHC mini-black-holes might be sufficiently long to allow the 'particle' to come into contact with the walls of the chamber of its creation.

It might be possible that they created a 'strangelet' at the RHIC instead, but I have seen no theory or evidence to support that, as of yet. The anticipated method of detection of a strangelet is if it is sufficiently stable to survive until it reaches a detector, and then its mass is measured based on its charge causing a curvature of its travel in a magnetic field.

It might very well be that strangelets are so short lived that they cannot interact with normal matter. Then again, they might have lifetimes sufficiently long to allow them to interact. That is where the difficulty lies, because under some theoretical scenarios, such interaction results in an initially relatively slow non-stoppable fusion reaction, due to the inherent greater stability of strange-matter compared to Fe-26, the most stable of normal matter.

Regards,


Walter

Hi walter...
point is what they found on rhic was quite defined: a mixture of u, s, d quarks in deconfined state... i believe those are the elements of strange matter not of black holes? Wouldnt be a strangelet just a step in the way to a black hole with similar properties, as a neutron star is sort of a weaker black hole? Hence properties are similar and nastase could confuse them. Also they expected a gas not a superfluid and they were 'totally surprised' as the scientific american put it... to find a perfect superfluid that live so long. If I recall correctly it is called strange matter because the first time they found a kaon it live also too long... and that was strange... So my opinion is that they are underestomating the power of strange matter to stabilize and grow... I read that if the strangelet lives longer that 10 up to -8 (which is the mean life of a kaon) it will stabilize... all that means the risks involved are very high because if it stabilizes and is more stable than fe-26 it will convert the entire earth core... Maybe a neutron star has a strange core that has converted fe-26 into strange matter as some cosmologists assert?... So my question upon researching all these things is why to take such a high risk after all this new data is out? I heard they didnt accepted a suit before all this information was out as the risk was then considered one in less than a million... but now things have changed, the theoretical risk looks more like a percentage, which means millions of lives at risk... so maybe this thing could be stopped legally now even if in the past it was not possible to do it?

Thanks for the response.

Yes, I agree, what they have created might also have been a more massive strangelet that lasted longer than expected, rather than simply a mini-black-hole.

As a mini-black-hole 'evaporates' via Hawking radiation [I presume you understand how that is postulated to occur - virtual-particles can appear outside the event horizon, then escape, thus allowing for a reduction in the mass. In essence, it is 'quantum tunneling' at its finest], it should suddenly convert into matter (quarks) once it got small enough, in a micro-burst of quantum tunneling.

One would presume it would likely initially convert into the the most stable form of matter, i.e. an equal number of u, d, and s quarks, which is the definition of strange matter [so called because of the presence of strange (s) quarks, in addition to the up (u) and down (d) quarks].

So, I believe you are correct, that what was being detected was the 'tail-end throe' of a mini-black-hole converting into strange matter, before exploding into a hail of smaller particles. The unexpectedly long life-time would be explained by the stabilizing influence of the strange-matter state, even though still highly radioactive (unstable) while that small. The LHC is designed to make them about 20 times more massive, with a correspondingly much longer life-time. Whether it will be long enough to allow the strangelets to reach the containment walls, and interact with the He and H in great abundance in the region, thereby allowing them to become ever more stable as they accrete mass, is anyone's guess at this juncture.

If they did create a strangelet, being what a mini-black-hole converts into during its final last gasp, then we can't tell yet what size a mini-black-hole exists in that form, rather than in the form of converting into a 'strangelet' as it 'evaporates'.

In other words, it is possible that the LHC might make a much larger 'strangelet' than at the RHIC, and it would take a still larger collider to make a 'pure' mini-black-hole.

However, we really don't know unless we do the experiment. If the Earth converts into a black-hole, we created a relatively more stable mini-black-hole than theory predicts.

If the Earth converts into a large strange-star, we created a relatively more stable strangelet than theory would suggest.

If we survive just fine, then we created either nothing new, or relatively benign strangelets.

well walter, so what can we do about it? i would like you to explain that to a larger audience... as you did it here... and i can make it happen... i dont think they will make a black hole... but i think they will make a strangelet and it will be as you put it 'anyone guess' what the strangelet will do... but i would like people to know... as that con-cerns us all
homo@europe.com

The Large Hadron Collider [LHC] at CERN might create numerous different particles that heretofore have only been theorized. Numerous peer-reviewed science articles have been published on each of these, and if you google on the term "LHC" and then the particular particle, you will find hundreds of such articles, including:

1) Higgs boson

2) Magnetic Monopole

3) Strangelet

4) Miniature Black Hole [aka nano black hole]

In 1987 I first theorized that colliders might create miniature black holes, and expressed those concerns to a few individuals. However, Hawking's formula showed that such a miniature black hole, with a mass of under 10,000,000 a.m.u., would "evaporate" in about 1 E-23 seconds, and thus would not move from its point of creation to the walls of the vacuum chamber [taking about 1 E-11 seconds travelling at 0.9999c] in time to cannibalize matter and grow larger.

In 1999, I was uncertain whether Hawking radiation would work as he proposed. If not, and if a mini black hole were created, it could potentially be disastrous. I wrote a Letter to the Editor to Scientific American [July, 1999] about that issue, and they had Frank Wilczek, who later received a Nobel Prize for his work on quarks, write a response. In the response, Frank wrote that it was not a credible scenario to believe that minature black holes could be created.

Well, since then, numerous theorists have asserted to the contrary. Google on "LHC Black Hole" for a plethora of articles on how the LHC might create miniature black holes, which those theorists believe will be harmless because of their faith in Hawking's theory of evaporation via quantum tunneling.

The idea that rare ultra-high-energy cosmic rays striking the moon [or other astronomical body] create natural miniature black holes -- and therefore it is safe to do so in the laboratory -- ignores one very fundamental difference.

In nature, if they are created, they are travelling at about 0.9999c relative to the planet that was struck, and would for example zip through the moon in about 0.1 seconds, very neutrino-like because of their ultra-tiny Schwartzschild radius, and high speed. They would likely not interact at all, or if they did, glom on to perhaps a quark or two, barely decreasing their transit momentum.

At the LHC, however, any such novel particle created would be relatively 'at rest', and be captured by Earth's gravitational field, and would repeatedly orbit through Earth, if stable and not prone to decay. If such miniature black holes don't rapidly evaporate and are produced in copious abundance [1/second by some theories], there is a much greater probability that they will interact and grow larger, compared to what occurs in nature.

There are a host of other problems with the "cosmic ray argument" posited by those who believe it is safe to create miniature black holes. This continuous oversight of obvious flaws in reasoning certaily should give one pause to consider what other oversights might be present in the theories they seek to test.

I am not without some experience in science.

In 1975 I discovered the tracks of a novel particle on a balloon-borne cosmic ray detector. "Evidence for Detection of a Moving Magnetic Monopole", Price et al., Physical Review Letters, August 25, 1975, Volume 35, Number 8. A magnetic monopole was first theorized in 1931 by Paul A.M. Dirac, Proceedings of the Royal Society (London), Series A 133, 60 (1931), and again in Physics Review 74, 817 (1948). While some pundits claimed that the tracks represented a doubly-fragmenting normal nucleus, the data was so far removed from that possibility that it would have been only a one-in-one-billion chance, compared to a novel particle of unknown type. The data fit perfectly with a Dirac monopole.

While I would very much love to see whether we can create a magnetic monopole in a collider, ethically I cannot currently support such because of the risks involved.

For more information, go to: www.LHCdefense.org

Regards,

Walter L. Wagner (Dr.)

This is interesting stuff.

yeah but it all sounds like it is written by one person...

:-0 Yeh it was a bit one-sided wannit?

thats what I am saying, I say the thread starter created 2 trolls and is talking to himself.

So you think Paul W. Dixon, Walter L. Wagner and alvatros are all the same person?

Go back to sleep, draqon.

No Wagner is well respected in his field. I have certainly heard of his work before.