Another Way to Destroy a Planet: the Strange Matter Bomb

[Doc]

How would you like to blast your enemies' planet to a super hot soup of strange matter (a mix of up, down and strange quarks)? Well, the strangelet is here for you! After neutron stars, we'll have quark planets...

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strangelet#Dangers

[Kristopher]

Re: Another Way to Destroy a Planet: the Strange Matter Bomb

 

IMO, we'd probably have some observational confirmation of that scenario if it were a real danger. Have any "quark stars" ever been observed, or even suspected?

[Nyrath]

Re: Another Way to Destroy a Planet: the Strange Matter Bomb

 

In Roger MacBride Allen's two novel series The Ring of Charon and The Shattered Sphere, there is a nasty titanic entity whose body is a moon-sized sphere of strange matter. It feeds by converting normal matter into strange matter.

[ajackson]

Re: Another Way to Destroy a Planet: the Strange Matter Bomb

 

If this were a real threat, strangelets generated by random cosmic rays would have already converted the Earth to a chunk of strange matter.

[Xavier Onassiss]

Re: Another Way to Destroy a Planet: the Strange Matter Bomb

 

If this were a real threat' date=' strangelets generated by random cosmic rays would have already converted the Earth to a chunk of strange matter.[/quote']

 

This is kind of a good news/bad news finding.

 

Yes, we can be reasonably certain this doesn't occur naturally...which would make it that much more frightening if strange matter could be artificially produced, and weaponized.

 

Uh...this stuff wouldn't happen to be "red", would it?

 

Don't look at me,

 

Xavier Onassiss

[ajackson]

Re: Another Way to Destroy a Planet: the Strange Matter Bomb

 

Yes' date=' we can be reasonably certain this doesn't occur naturally...[/quote']

No, we can be reasonably sure that strangelets are not stable under the conditions present on Earth, because they would be formed by cosmic rays (we can't quite rule out strange stars, but they're nearly indistinguishable from neutron stars and form under the same conditions, so we don't much care). Thus, manufacturing of strangelets isn't useful.

[Doc]

Re: Another Way to Destroy a Planet: the Strange Matter Bomb

 

If this were a real threat' date=' strangelets generated by random cosmic rays would have already converted the Earth to a chunk of strange matter.[/quote']

 

No, it occurs naturally.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strangelets#Natural_or_artificial_occurrence

 

To provoque a catastrophe scenario would simply requier a far more important number of such reactions in a given time.

 

This is not a concern for strangelets in cosmic rays because they are produced far from Earth and have had time to decay to their ground state, which is predicted by most models to be positively charged, so they are electrostatically repelled by nuclei, and would rarely merge with them.[14][15] But high-energy collisions could produce negatively charged strangelet states which live long enough to interact with the nuclei of ordinary matter.

In short, it would probably have to be artificially induced. Note that I just wanted to offer GMs a plausible way to explain their planet destroyer weapon (ie. impress their players with some remotely real techno babble...), not to imply that we should consider any real threat here.

 

 

 

IMO' date=' we'd probably have some observational confirmation of that scenario if it were a real danger. Have any "quark stars" ever been observed, or even suspected?[/quote']

 

No quark star has ever been confirmed yet, but there are some overweighted neutron stars that could qualify to this category.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strange_star#Observed_overdense_neutron_stars

 

But as I mentionned higher, eventhough there could exist quark stars in the universe, they wouldn't pose a reasonnable threat to Earth, at least not more than any other star given their distance to us. After all, the galaxy is filled with brown dwarves, black holes and neutron stars that could stealthly pass by our solar system and disrupt it's gravitational equilibrium or throw in a lot of small bodies form the Oort cloud in another heavy bombardment event...

 

The solar system could encounter a somewhat denser neutral hydrogen cloud in the galaxy, the pressure of wich could push the heliosphere to a radius smaller than Earth's orbit around the sun, exposing us to the interstellar environment or even dropping a large amount of neutral hydrogen in the atmosphere wich, while reacting with the oxygen to form water, could asphyxiate us by taking out all oxygen from us, and freeze us to death while forming a dense layer of ice particules in the upper atmosphere, blocking the sun away from us...

 

If you add gamaray bursts, Earth-crossing asteroids, short and long period comets and the like... GOD!!! WE COULD ALL DIE ANY BILLION YEAR!!!!

[ajackson]

Re: Another Way to Destroy a Planet: the Strange Matter Bomb

 

In short' date=' it would probably have to be artificially induced.[/quote']

What happens when a cosmic ray hits atmosphere? A collision. Strangelets wouldn't be present in cosmic rays, but they would be generated by cosmic rays impacting the earth.

[Nyrath]

Re: Another Way to Destroy a Planet: the Strange Matter Bomb

 

If this were a real threat' date=' strangelets generated by random cosmic rays would have already converted the Earth to a chunk of strange matter.[/quote']

Depends on the rate of transformation. A clump of strangelets might be eating the heart out of Earth even as we speak, but they might take a few billion years before the effect becomes noticeable.

[Doc]

Re: Another Way to Destroy a Planet: the Strange Matter Bomb

 

What happens when a cosmic ray hits atmosphere? A collision. Strangelets wouldn't be present in cosmic rays' date=' but they would be generated by cosmic rays impacting the earth.[/quote']

 

It's all explained in the wiki page:

 

This is not a concern for strangelets in cosmic rays because they are produced far from Earth and have had time to decay to their ground state, which is predicted by most models to be positively charged, so they are electrostatically repelled by nuclei, and would rarely merge with them.[14][15]

 

So, this happens way above our heads in such quantities and for such a short time that it doesn't represent a significant phenomenon. It could be otherwise in particle accelerators:

 

But high-energy collisions could produce negatively charged strangelet states which live long enough to interact with the nuclei of ordinary matter.[16]

 

So this would have to be artificially induced.

[Xavier Onassiss]

Re: Another Way to Destroy a Planet: the Strange Matter Bomb

 

This is plenty interesting, but it's looking less than practical as a planet-destroyer. I think I'll stick with relativistic weapons in my campaign. "Earth go boom, real good."

 

 

Don't look at me,

Xavier Onassiss