The Sun

But as I have said before, this is all an opinion, not informed by mathematics.

 

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I agree with all this and add that think it possible, but unlikely, that the shock wave* could compress a solar mass almost to "black hole collapse" density, but not quite. As it would not have more than 1.44 solar masses it would re-expand, well damped oscillation while in the expanding plasma, but perhaps a variable weak star afterwards - I am not suggesting this, only mentioning it might be possible. If the mass were 2 solar masses that got compressed to near but less than "black hole collapse" density, then that might be an additional lens for shock waves as it formed neutron star, but perhaps that neutron star would be blown apart (My memory is failing me - is it the neutron of the proton that is unstable, when isolated? If mass of neutrons less than 1.44 solar mass could be observed it would lend support for my theory.)

I do not understand Carr on this either. too complex for me. Hell, I do not really understand why there was any "compression" in the expansion of the big bang, but that seems to be well accepted by many who know more about this than I do. I understand well that any explosion within matter will compress the matter surrounding the point of explosion (by the inertia of the more distant matter) but there is not "more distant matter as I understand the big bang.
----------------------------------------
*I really need some term other than "shock wave." - Perhaps "piston wave" would be better. What I am talking about is an explosion so powerful that the very adjacent matter, which did not collapse into the black hole, is accelerated to nearly the speed of light in a very short distance (100 meters?) and matter 300 or more meters farther away does not yet even "know" an explosion has occurred as there is a speed of light limitation. Only microseconds before it gets hit by a slug of matter coming at it at near c, does is get the light (really gamma ray) flash that something has happened. Even that flash has so much photon pressure that great (100 fold?) compression may run ahead of the big compression soon to follow. This impacting slug is what can compress it to (10 of ?)thousands of times the density it had. "Piston wave" conveys this idea better than "shock-wave," I think. I.e. each of the "shock waves" is really two - first the relative weak (but still much stronger an A-Bomb can make in its surrounding inertial "tamper.") radiation pulse compression followed by the much stronger "piston wave" compression of the speeding matter slug.

Hope this footnote also helps you to understand how many black holes might form, each that does so making more of the "dual compression waves." For a 300 solar mass star, probably at least a dozen of the several “few solar mass” black holes, all in less than a second with perhaps 50 "less than solar mass" ones as the various secondary compression waves collide.

 

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Billy T:

I've been following this discussion without comment. As to your failing memory, protons are relatively stable by themselves (many searches for an instability have been made, and radioactive half-lives, if they exist, are way long). It is the neutron which is unstable (radioactive) when isolated by itself, with a half-life on the order of 20 minutes, whereupon it decays into a proton, and emits an electron to conserve charge. [I wonder if they ever have an alternative decay route of decaying into an anti-proton, emitting a positron to conserve charge?]

Also, many theorists now posit that possibly neturon stars are a misnomer, and they should instead be considered to be strange stars (a single very large 'strangelet' with an excess of strange quarks over up and down quarks) rather than a single large normal nuclear matter of neutral charge, as it would theoretically be more stable.

You'll likely be hearing more about strangelets and their properties, as the LHC at CERN might have the capability of producing them. They could potentially be quite deadly, turning the Earth into a small strange star!

 

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Perhaps we should take Paul more seriously?
I would appreciate your view on this, and on the basic (ill defined) concept I am proposing that might let the huge first generation stars form many black holes and "neutron" or "strange" stars in sort of a "chain reaction" of less than a few seconds duration.

I also want to correct, slighly, some of my prior description relating to "radiation pressure." It is more that the region of thermal instability / high fusion rate / is expanded against the surrounding cooler parts of the star by its very high radiation pressure than that subsequently to fuel exhaustion in that region, the exterior's radiation pressure causes it to shrink. It shrinks as it cools and ceases to exert the very high (T^4) pradiation pressure. I.e. I was not correctly explaining why there is shrinkage when the fuel is exhausted and this could cause the frist thermal instability region to initiate the black hole production chain reaction, especially if the inward motion inertia of the "shrinking overshoots."

Do you have any idea how the radiation pressure of near central iron forming 300 solar mass star compares with the gravitation pressure there?

 

BillyT:

I have not studied enough about star collapse to give solid information. There are lots of theoretical astrophysicists at Stanford and elsewhere that I met at least year's Protostars and Planets V (PPV) conference on the Big Island (Hilton Waikoloa Resort, on the other side of the island from where I live) who do nothing but computer-model first generation star formation/collapse.

However, generally, it does appear to me that it should be possible that a collapsing star, if the collapse is not fully symetrical (which would be virtually impossible), could indeed generate several regions which collapse into black-holes, even as the star initially implodes and re-bound explodes, leaving several smaller-mass black holes rapidly moving away from each other, as well as tons (literally many megatons) of matter in simple (monatomic, fully ionized to the nucleus, i.e. no electrons in orbit), very hot form, also expanding outward (standard supernova scenario).

Because neutron stars are now believed to essentially be a single large 'atom' of strong-force bound matter, and because a mixture of strange quarks with the up and down quarks would make for an even more stable state, theorists have posited that such 'star' remnant would likely be a single 'strange atom' rather than a single 'neutron star atom'. They have theorized that in the formation process, small 'strangelets' are ejected (along with the monatomic atoms), of roughly the same mass as the monatomic atoms. Searches for them on Earth and elsewhere have proved negative. However, many theorists also predict that such 'strangelets' are radioactive and decay into 'normal' monatomic nuclei, with half-lives on the order of microseconds to kiloseconds. Hence, they have decayed back to 'normal' matter before they go very far in space, and never make it to Earth, thus explaining the negative search results, as well as why Earth is not now a huge 'strange atom'.

The LHC is designed to replicate conditions of such star collapse leading to strangelet production. The arguments produced thus far showing that strangelets are 'benign' are wholly flawed, and include argument such that all such strangelets will be positive, not neutral or negative (so as to allow the Coulomb repulsion to keep them from coming close enough with normal matter to fuse, adding to their mass in the more stable strangelet form, rather than the less-stable normal matter form). However, other theorists now predict that they might instead be negatively charged.

Moreover, that argument overlooks the fact that spontaneous fusion already can occur for deuterium-deuterium atom pairs (albeit at a very low rate circa 1E-23 fusions/second per DD pair). Stephen Jones increased that spontaneous fusion rate tremendously by introducing muons into a DD water misture. The muons replaced the electrons in thousands of DD water molecules during their short lifetime (circa a microsecond), generating circa 130 fusions per introduced muon! Apparently, the much greater mass of the muon shrank the covalent bonding distance sufficiently that the spontaneous fusion rate increased tremendously.

What is not known is what the spontanteous fusion rate for a positive strangelet would be. Because of its much deeper fusion potential energy well compared to normal matter fusion, we would expect its spontaneous fusion rate to be far greater than for DD fusion, which would allow for positively charged strangelets to also be less than benign!

Anyway, if you want to read more about this, Google on Risk Evaluation Forum for the web-site describing some of those adverse scenarios.

Regards,


Walter

 

Speaking of things not found that should exist, you may find the section of my book which discuses several other dark visitor candidates interesting. There should be an enormous mass in magnetic monopoles formed along with other matter. I suggest that perhaps it was.

The magnetic attraction between N and S monopole is much stronger than their gravitational attraction, even though they are much, very much, more massive than protons etc. The attraction also falls off only as inverse square, not as the magnetic diploe's inverse cube. It seems likely to me, that the N & S monopoles of the big bang soon merged, perhaps initially orbiting very fast at close range until gravitation radiation truly "merged" them. At this point because of their extraordinary mass, only a pair, may have made a small black hole, massive enough perhaps to grow faster than Hawking radiate away, of if not, still this may explain why we now find none. I of course like the first alternative and in the book print the following suggestive drawing:

NSNSNS
SNSNSN
NSNSNS
SNSNSN

explaining that it would be more spherical and 3D and would eventually collapse into a black hole when some now unknown number of N & S have collected on the surface of this growing "monopole crystal."

There are more than half a dozen possibilities for my "dark visitor" and several different sources of the "black hole" possibility. I did not know of your "strangelets" or I would have included them also. Book is really just a vehicle to teach some physics to people who would never knowing open a physics book. I want to scare them badly enough that a few may actually decide to see if it is possible their world is about to end.

 

Here is a review of the dangers of strangelet production; I am sure that Walter is familiar with this document.
http://chess.captain.at/strangelets-Review.doc
The relevant section is reproduced here;

If the the authors of this document are wrong, we may all be in trouble. Any thoughts?

 

One problem with your monopole crystal idea is that north monopoles and south monopoles mutually annihilate, so that makes it a little dificult to form such a crystal.

 

Thanks for the input. Yes, I am quite familiar with the attempts to 'prove' the LHC will be safe via the safety review prepared for it, modeled after the RHIC safety review. I've punched quite a few holes in both of those arguments.

I happen to have a little experience in magnetic monopole searches. Way back in 1973, I was engaged in cosmic radiation research at UC Berkeley, and a balloon borne flight particle detector (Lexan stack) came back, but rather than analyzed at the time, it was shelved and the SkyLab flight particle detector which had also just come back was analyzed for the next two years.

Then, in May, 1975 with time on my hands following completion of the SkyLab detector analysis, I was requested to analyze the balloon borne detector from two years prior. The scope of the experiment was essentially the same as for the SkyLab detector, to find the charge and energy spectrum of the cosmic rays that had struck/passed-through the detector.

Nothing unusual was found in the SkyLab detector, which had had 100-fold the collecting power of the balloon-borne detector from two years prior. Naturally, I was not expecting to find anything unusual in the balloon-borne detector.

However, upon completion of the preliminary etching (dissolving in NaOH) and microscopic scanning of the detector, a particle had been detected which had caused essentially very high ionization, and very uniform ionization, as it traversed the stack of Lexan (about 32 sheets totalling 8 mm thick). Preliminary data-analysis output from the computer indicated a nucleus of charge of 135, with standard deviations at less than 0.5 charge (very uniform ionizations in each sheet, with virtually no variation from sheet to sheet).

This was highly unusual for two reasons:

1. Out of thousands of particles previously measured, the standard deviation on the charge estimate was always greater than 1 charge (due to the changing ionization as the particle slowed in the stack).

2. Never before had I seen a series of particle tracks traversing the Lexan stack in which the particle had not slowed, which yields a series of ever greater ionization rates the deeper the particle progresses through the stack. [Ionization is proportional to the square of the charge, and the inverse square of the speed]. Only ultra-relativistic particles, in which even though there would be some energy loss through the stack, the speed would still be close to .9999c, would result in such a track. While I had detected some highly energetic tracks, the ionization rate always at least doubled as the particle traversed from the top of the stack to the bottom (and it was usually quite a bit more).

Because the charge estimate was in the region for which nuclear particles are theorized to be highly radioactive (i.e. not on a 'plateau of stability'), I doubted that the Lexan stack had detected a normal nuclear particle. Instead, I suggested that a more likely explanation was that a magnetic monopole of magnetic charge 137 (and it would have exactly mimiced an electric charges ionization damage) had been detected. The discrepancy in charge (135, versus 137) would have readily been accounted for by systematic measurement difficulties of very high ionization tracks systematically slighlty under-measuring the ionization. [I was using a 1600X microscope, measuring distances down to the wavelength of visible light].

Subsequent analysis of the Cherenkov detector sheet revealed no Cherenkov image, indicating that the speed was less than circa 0.67c (the speed of light in Lexan plastic). The Cherenkov detector routinely did detect near-relativistic particles (which always showed some slowing in the Lexan stack by the increase in ionization as the particle traversed the stack).

That information does also allow for the chance that approximately for every trillion or so high speed, high-Z particles traversing the stack, one might doubly fractionate, losing a couple of charges, and also have variations in the plastic and ionizations, which would allow for it to mimic the data for a magnetic monopole. Hence, the alternative explanation is that I just got very lucky, and detected such doubly-fractionating nucleus, without ever having seen any of the other trillion or so such events which would have come close to, but not exactly mimiced, a magnetic monopole, before then.

Now, if I could only capitalize on that kind of luck at Vegas!

Anyway, no other plausible explanations were put forth, though many theorists have since suggested that a magnetic monople would have had to have a mass circa 1E22 eV to account for the data.

So, maybe that's what's being detected at Pierre Auger and elsewhere on the ground, when they get those high E showers circa 1E21-22 eV -- the breakup or annihilation of a magnetic monopole pair!

Anyway, more food for thought.

Regards,


Walter

 

Very interesting your post Walter. I recall reading at least 5 years ago of one other observation (assuming not some hoax) of possible detection of the monopole. I no longer have the reference. Someone had a supper conducting ring and was carefully and was continuously monitoring the current (I presume actually the associated magnetic field). A sudden step in the current was observed. An analysis was done and the result was consistent with a monopole passing thru the ring. I do not recall if the "step" was only a transient or if a new value of the field was established. Because of the Miesner effect and the complexity, I am not now sure what to expect if a monopole were to pass thru a super conducting ring.

I am not very proficient at searching so if you are interested, I will leave that to you.

Your comments about a monopole pair are a partial reply to:

I do not know why he states this as fact, other than it is consistent with the lack of clearly detected monopoles* and hope he will explain more why he makes this statement.

Reason, I think it may be possible is that some systems that should equally well decay and merge do not (Quantum effects prevent that.) For example, the hydrogen atom, is an electron "orbiting" a proton and classically very rapidly (much less than a second, as I recall, from doing the problem years ago) the acceleration of the electron should radiate away all of its energy, spiraling the electron into the proton, perhaps making a neutron, as happens in neutrons stars, if they are real? Thus, until I know some reason, why not, I would be inclined to think that N & S monopoles could form a stable "magnetic dipole atom" and avoid merging /annihilation. - [/b]Why not eburacum45 if electron and proton can form stable hydrogen?[/b]


If I symbolically represent such a "magnetic dipole atom" as: (NS) or with 180 flip in my perspective, as (SN) then, first how can we be sure that chains do not "polymerize"? to form: (NS)(NS)(NS)(NS)(NS)? or (SN)(SN)(SN)(SN)(SN)?

I will call the first the “NS strand” and the second the “SN strand,” but they are the same as it is again only a switch of 180degees in my perspective, not a real difference.

If this is possible, might not SN and NS strands bind laterally to form:

(NS)(NS)(NS)(NS)(NS)
(SN)(SN)(SN)(SN)(SN)
(NS)(NS)(NS)(NS)(NS)
(SN)(SN)(SN)(SN)(SN)
(NS)(NS)(NS)(NS)(NS)
(SN)(SN)(SN)(SN)(SN)
(NS)(NS)(NS)(NS)(NS)

Quite frankly it is a pain in my lowest orifice (or second lowest at times

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) to type all those paired parentheses, so I think I will stop and just type:

NSNSNSNSNS and SNSNSNSNSN which when laterally bound look remarkably like something in someone's earlier post.

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or:

NSNSNSNSNS
SNSNSNSNSN
NSNSNSNSNS
SNSNSNSNSN
NSNSNSNSNS
SNSNSNSNSN

but that can not be right, as I have it on good authority (quote=eburacum45) that "north monopoles and south monopoles mutually annihilate"

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-------------------------------------------
*I can not very well knock this line of reasoning as it is essentilly the same one I use, I say: Monoples must have aggregated to form crystals until they were dense enough to collapse into black holes Because they are not now observed. Perhaps by identical reasoning eburacum45 might say: That N and S monopoles must annihilate Because they are not now observed.

 

Both of you may be interested in a paragraph on page 103 of my book, so I reproduce most of it:

Most of the searches for the postulated monopoles have used very strong magnets and tried to pull the monopole out of some material, usually iron, especially iron meteorites that have long wandered through space. One Chicago based experiment tried to extract them form oysters on the theory that these filter feeders had processed a great volumes of ocean water, but personally, I think the fact that they are expensive in Chicago and taste good may have had some influence on this choice.

 

BillyT:

I believe it was Blas Cabrera (sp?) who, circa 1978 at Stanford, announced that he had detected that anomalous charge in a superconducting current, and concluded it was a magnetic monopole. However, there is no 'physical' evidence left behind, just the print-out on the paper monitoring the current.

The Lexan stack plastic from the monopole candidate still exists (P. Buford Price at UC Berkeley has custody, as the PI who funded the work), with each of two pairs of conical shaped 'etch' tracks in each sheet of the stack (except for the three sheets that were initially etched, taken from near the top, near the center, and near the bottom, that were etched and in which they merged to form a single 'cylinder' in the clear plastic, narrower in the center than at the two mouths, because the etch time was set way too long for a high-Z particle, so as to find the anticipated many more much-lower-Z particles in a broad general scan on a scanning microscope used initially to locate the particles of interest).

Positrons and electrons can bind together to form "positronium", and such 'atoms' have been tickled to determine their electron shell structure, which is as I recall similar to that of a proton-electron pair (Hydrogen). I believe such 'atoms' last for about a microsecond before undergoing annihilation, releasing that pair of 511 KeV photons representing their rest mass annihilation energy.

Accordingly, I would conclude that it might be possible for a N/S magnetic monopole pair to exist. Perhaps they are created by very rare head-on collisions of ultra-high energy cosmic rays, though I suspect that it is more likely that such pairs would be 'primordial'. It would appear, however, that when they come into contact with normal matter, that they do indeed then annihilate, releasing their rest mass in some other form, including possibly a shower of 'normal' particles (photons, electrons, protons, muons, etc.). That would explain the relatively negative results in searchs for monopoles on Earth's surface, moon rocks, meteorites, etc.

 

Glad it does. Lexan should last a long time. I hope you have photos of the tracks etc. It sounds very important to me.This evidence must eventually get explained and the explanation, whatever it is, be widely accepted by large group of physicists.

I recall you are correct - positrium does have exactly the spectra predicted for it by quantum theory - shifted hydrogen lines in the Lyman, Balmer series etc.

I have never considered any source except the period when matter condensed out of energy near the start of time. Certainly we will never see one produced by this Johnny-come-lately" CR process

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BTW, as you may already have heard, so this just for the benefit of others, if you found and could keep a single monopole, you might become an instant billionare, I think, if it is not easily destroyed. This because it could be easily accelerated and used for high energy reserch, replacing billion dollar accelerators in fundamental research, so I have read, but not sure it is true. I.e. rent it out for >$50,000/day.

If that is true, scratch the monetarily motivated search for one. (See above.) Surely, that is not a universally accepted view (or if it is, - it is a realtively recent one) as there have been quite a few attempts to pull them out of iron, etc. (See, I hope interesting, report of real search made in Chicago about 20 or 25 years ago in my last post.)

 

Eburacum45:

With regard to your posting, allow me to explain some of the problems with the 'safety argument' presented by its authors. I will proceed with their last argument first.

They argue that cosmic ray collisions occur in deep space, and it is possible to measure that rate. That is clearly true, and I have no problems whatsoever with their analysis or their conclusion as to the natural rate of head-on collisions of high-E high-Z cosmic rays in deep space. They then conclude that if "dangerous strangelets" were created, they would ultimately be 'swept up' into other existing stars, converting them into supernovae at a rate far greater than we actually see. Ergo, they conclude that such is not occurring.

The fundamental flaw of that argument is that they assume (i.e. make an ass out of u and me) that the strangelets so-produced would be stable, non-radioactive strangelets. However, almost all theories I've read regarding strangelet production is that small ones (i.e. with mass on the order of 1000 amu or less) would be radioactive, the smaller they are, the shorter the half-life. Only very large strangelets would end up being stable. Ones which would be created at the RHIC, the LHC, etc. would likely be on the order of 5-20 amu, highly radioactive, with half-lives on the order of a microsecond, as would ones created in deep-space by natural head-on collisions of ultra-high-E, high-Z cosmic rays. Hence, any produced in nature in deep-space would quickly decay back to normal matter, and not have an opportunity to drift/travel through space over large distances on the order of light-years ,and be swept up by existing stars.

If this is but an example of the 'reasoning' of the best minds in physics, it certainly does not lend itself to confidence that their other arguments are any better.

They also argue about the known collision rate of high-E iron nuclei on the moon's surface. Using their figures, we see that such an iron nucleus at 10 GeV/nucleon is actually about 5.6 E11 eV, striking an iron nucleus at rest on the moon's surface of total energy of about 5 E10 eV (rest mass, with one proton at circa 0.9 GeV) sitting at rest on the moon's surface, resulting in a particle of combined mass in its own moving reference frame (Center of Momentum reference frame, or COM) of about 1.2 E11 eV, moving at very high speed relative to the moon (at near the speed of light).

Contrarily, the LHC is designed to create particle collisions at about 400 TeV, or about 4 E14 eV, considerably higher. (A single Gold atom has rest mass of about 180 GeV, or about 1.8 E11 eV, and two combined is about 3.6 E11 eV; they are accelerated in a ring to about 1000-fold increase in mass as they approach c)

In order to mimic such collisions on the moon, the flux is drastically reduced by many orders of magnitude, substantially reducing the 'safety factor' they argue exists. Specifically, in order to mimic a COM energy of 4 E14 eV by two colliding Iron nuclei, the incoming energy of the Iron nucleus would need to be approximately 6 E18 eV, striking an Iron nucleus at rest on the moon's surface.

Because the flux drops so drastically with increasing energy, such incoming Iron nuclei would be exceedingly rare. They are so rare, that they have never been observed by direct observation, and indeed may not exist! Rather, they are inferred to exist by the assumption (again, making an ass out of u and me) that one can continue to extrapolate a flux versus energy curve for all Iron nuclei, allowing one to even calculate a flux for such imaginary cosmic rays of, say, 1E25 eV, even though such would certainly not exist. Rather, the highest energy cosmic rays directly observed have been Hydrogen or Helium nuclei, not Iron nuclei.

So, the problem with that second argument is that 1) they are way off on the alleged safety factor (I believe they simply screwed up with their math) by at least ten to fifteen orders of magnitude, and they might well be off entirely, because there is no proof that such high-E Iron nuclei even exist. That is simply an assumption they have made.

Now, another argument they do not even address is that if we were to assume that there is some natural production of strangelets on the moon, mimicing the LHC or RHIC, we can conclude that 1) its production rate integrated over the life-time of the moon since its creation would be far far less than at the LHC over its expected lifetime of ten years, due to the drastically reduced 'safety factor' described above; and 2) such strangelets would be moving at near the speed of light relative to the moon, whereas strangelets created in a laboratory setting would be at relative rest relative to the Earth, the liquid Helium of the surrounding coolants, the Hydrogen in the plastic insulation of wiring, etc.

The theory for the production of strangelets indicate that small strangelets such as would be created on the moon, or at the LHC/RHIC would only be able to merge/join/fuse with very small nuclei, i.e. Hydrogen, Helium, etc. (and converting that nuclear matter of up/down quarks into strange matter of up/down/strange quarks by emission of electric charge in the form of electrons) Only after they grew to about 100-1000 amu would they be able to fuse with higher-Z nuclei such as Aluminum, Silicon, Iron, or the other such nuclei lying on the surface of the moon or somewhat below the surface of the moon, in great abundance. The abundance of Hydrogen and Helium on the moon is substantially lower than the abundance of those elements in the vicinity of the chamber where strangelets would be created at the LHC. Thus, again, we have another drastic reduction in the alleged 'safety factor' due to the sparcity of nuclei with which strangelets would be able to fuse on the moon, compared to on Earth.

And, the other factor mentioned above is that strangelets created on the moon would be moving at close to the speed of light relative to the moon, and would traverse its diameter in a fraction of a second if they are unable to interact with moon nuclei easily.

We do know that for neutrons, very highly energetic neutrons can traverse great distances through normal matter, essentially not 'seeing' the nuclei they go zipping past. Only once they are thermalized to slow speeds do they more readily interact. Each substance, of course, has its own interaction curve for neutrons of varying speeds, and some nuclei are nearly invisible, whereas others such as Boron readily interact. And, there are different curves for the types of interactions (fission, elastic collision, etc.) That information was obtained by empirical analysis.

No data, of course, is available for how high speed strangelets interact with matter compared to thermal strangelets. It might well be that a high speed strangelet would interact a few times while traversing the moon, slowing from 0.99999c to 0.999c as it absorbed/fused with a stray Hydrogen atom in the interior of the moon, and then zip on out the other side, decaying back to normal matter a few seconds later while it was in deep space.

So, the fact that strangelets might be produced naturally on the moon provides essesntially no safety factor whatsoever for the LHC which is qualitatively quite different.

Finally, they assume that Iron-Iron nuclei collisions on the moon would be qualitatively the same as Gold-Gold nuclei collisons at the LHC. While this might be true, again it is an assumption unsupported by any solid evidence. The some four-fold increase in nucleons of the Gold-Gold system compared to the Iron-Iron system of the moon might well be all the difference it takes to make strangelets, or not make strangelets. No one knows.

I have also discussed another argument in other postings elsewhere (check my other posts) that the ultra-high-E cosmic ray showers detected on Earth's surface might actually represent some other process other than detection of an incoming high-E nucleus. Specifically, I suggested that they might represent the break-up of an incoming exotic particle such as a magnetic monopole pair, releasing its inherent high-E rest mass as a shower of particles, detected on the Earth's surface at Pierre Auger and elsewhere. If so, the 'safety factor' is essentially eliminated, as there is no real proof of any nuclei higher than Helium to create the COM energies of the LHC. They do not even attempt to argue that a rare He-Iron collision on the moon of equivalent COM energy of the LHC should be qualitatively the same as a Au-Au collision at the LHC.

Finally, elsewhere they have argued that only positively charged strangelets would be produced, and hence could not fuse with positively charged nuclei on the Earth. This is total rubbish.

First, many theorists now predict that negative (or neutral) strangelets might be produced, essentially negating their argument. However, assuming their argument's assumption is correct, namely that only positively charged strangelets would be produced, their second assumption that they cannot fuse with positively charged nuclei due to the Coulomb repulsion is likewise flawed.

Specifically, as I've detailed in other posts, Deuterium-Deuterium (DD) spontaneous fusion is known to occur, albeit at a very low rate circa 1E-23 fusions per DD pair per second. I.e., a liter of deuterated water (heavy water) would experience about 1 spontaneous fusion per second. Dr. Steven Jones of BYU, in the 1980s, whose work was published in Scientific American circa 1987, was able to drastically enchance that spontaneous fusion rate by introducing muons into such a deuterated water system.

The muons, during their micro-second life-time would substitute into the covalent bonds, replacing an electron. Due to its much larger mass, the covalent bond shrunk somewhat, allowing for the spontaneous fusion rate to increase. Approximately 130 fusions were recorded for each muon introduced, a HUGE increase, though still not enough to give a break-even on energy production, which was the aim of the experiment.

We do NOT know what the spontaneous fusion rate would be for a small strangelet in close proximity to Helium or Hydrogen - - however, we should presume it would be substantially greater that for normal matter fusion, because the depth of the energy well created by converting to strange matter is far greater than the well for D-D fusion.

Thus, the argument that positively charged strangelets would be safe is falacious, as is the argument that only positively charged strangelets would be created.

Finally, strangelets would likely not lead to a rapid exponential fusion along the lines of exponential nuclear fission in an A-bomb. Rather, until the fused mass reached the diameter of an atom, the fusion process would likely be nearly linear, and a single strangelet could well take trillions of years to reach that size. Only by producing copious quantitites would we be creating a near-term risk; though creation of millions might well produce a risk in the next millenium.

Anyway, I trust this has given you some insight into the lack of a proper safety factor, as of yet, for the LHC, etc.

Regards,


Walter L. Wagner (Dr.)

 

Eburacum45, on 6July said to me & 2inquisitive:

"Well done; way to hijack a thread fellers! The thread was originally about the death of the Sun."

So 2inqusitive dropped out, with Eburacum45 as his replacement and I thought the hi-jacking was still intact. I admit I had been a little rough on 2Q, so went easier on Eburacum45, but he too seemed about to quit, conceding my points, etc. (He even said he now understood and could grant my possibility as open, or words to that effect.) So I thought: what can I do now, with both opponents slain! Desperate times! I might need to say something about the SUN, I.e. on tread - disgusting way to end such a long hi-jack.

Fortunately, Wagner stepped up to fill the slack, even though we tend to agree too much to keep a good hi-jacking going for long without some fresh red meat to fry. (We all may get more than we want soon.)

Now, after Wagner's last few posts, I fear I may have to turn in my first class hi-jackers card. Depressing!

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It seems that this hi-jacking may be a very badly botched job, not worthy of the praise it has received. These several weeks about black holes and monoploes, instead of the sun, may have been on thread after all.

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May as well end it all “strangely” - i.e. go ahead LHC guys, make your tiny black holes, monopoles and strangelets etc., lose them on what I thought was permanently cold Earth.

Make the NEW SUN!

Blow out the old sun, etc. (Which our posts were unknowingly about and on thread, all this time!) Paul was right!

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This interests me or a number of reasons. Firstly if the process is linear then the procedure could probably be kept within safe limits, at least for the medium to long term.
Secondly the possibility that strangelets could catalyse or provoke fusion could be of interest to fusion power generation enthusiasts, who are currently despondent because of bremsstrahlung losses.
If strangelets can be useful in the power generation industry then this might lead to their mass production.

 

Going back to the idea of a 2 mass perturber entering the Solar system, I have recently downloaded this program for my own amusement;
http://www.orbitsimulator.com/gravity/articles/download.html
the intrusion of such an object can be modelled. The four inner planets are not very much disturbed by such an object at 12AU, presumably because they are inside the Sun's Hill sphere; but the outer planets are disturbed in various drastic ways depending on where they are in their orbits and the speed of the intruder.