Talk:Strangelet/Archive 1

Claim of definitive new advances

I have updated the article. It was an article that stopped in strangelet physics of the past millenium. Since then there ahave been definitive new advances. I have respected all possible from the previous article specifically the first age of strangelet physics, as explained by the previous wikipedian. Please this is good strangelet physics, do not erase, i will try to find again the quotes that got erased in my reposition and put then again!, thanks. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Homocion (talk • contribs) 22:30, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

PLEASE SIGN YOUR CONTRIBUTIONS, you just have to type 4 tildes, it isn't hard.

Please present your suggestions here on the talk page before adding. I am open to including genuine new advances in this field, and I will help you with writing about them in clear correct English. I am an active researcher in this area so I can give expert opinions and advice. Dark Formal (talk) 22:38, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

it is clear that you cannot eliminate the fundamental models of strangelets atoms, fission and the different ranges of its stability, im quoting the most recent articles, the articles that are quoted now are from the 80s we are 20 years ahead, please accept an update version of the article or i will think you are censoring strangelet physics instead of expanding the article, you cannot hold as best sources 30 year old articles...

AGAI!, ihave updated the article the article says theoretical advances, and so that is what i have added, the chinse center for nuclear research at shangai and nobel prize wilczeck are theoreticians of first rank and their analysis of cfl stability and ice-9 reactions of utmost value to the scientific community, please do not erase it, it is absurd to erase sound strange theory precisely when we are in the year in which strange matter will be regularly produced at cern. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Homocion (talk • contribs) 00:45, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

I am an expert in this field and I have written many papers with Wilczek. The material you are adding is not correct. I am happy to help you add new CORRECT material to this page. Just write your proposals on this talk page and we can collaborate on making this page better. The first thing is for you to provide sources (references to reputably published articles) for the material you want to add. Dark Formal (talk) 02:42, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

So dark formal, why dont you try to be constructive instead of destructive and do moe than erase but create, as you are an éxpert and write yourself your model of a strange atom and the process of ice-9, what you can\t do is just erase it as if they did not exist. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Homocion (talk • contribs) 06:06, 11 January 2008 (UTC) Plus the article had references to madsen, wilczek, hence you, chen even an encyclopedia of quark-plasma works. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Homocion (talk • contribs) 06:15, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Have you looked on your user talk page? I made a post there offering to work with you on additions to the articles on strangelets and strange matter. So far, the material you have added is not correct, and the English is not correct either. I am happy to help you with these issues, to make useful contributions to these pages. Please propose your cjanges on the discussion pages first, and we can work together on them. Dark Formal (talk) 15:45, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

back from holidays as usual all is erased... Dark formal, if youa re the 'boss' of this article, fill up the advances of the past 20 years... This is a theoretical article... in which 2 things should on my view appear, the last theoretical advances made in the subject by madsen, wilczek and the chinese research teams. This should include: the stability of strangers under the standard MIT bag constrictions. The growth of strangelet and its perceived reaction in neutron stars, namely the ice-9 reaction. The possible existence of strangelet matter, as the next stage of evolution of strangelet plasma. Now strangelet on my perception of english is any kind of matter that contains strange quarks, which are the quarks that bind up and down into a more stable configuation than ordinary matter. QGP which is what it was done at rhic is just the previous phase to QGM, Quark gluon matter. And if as those people seem to have proved it is a ground state of matter, it is obvious that an ice-9 reaction will be exogenic, that is produce more enegy than it needs (so it will be fusion not fission), and as all erxogenic reactions very easy to produce by any 'accidental' runaway process. This is what i want to put and connect to LHC. This is an objective view of the dangers involved. Trust me if i tell you that i am one of the physicist who stands to gain more on his original research when the LHC goes on line... So i have little enthusiasm for strangelet theory but i read all those articles and to me Theory and we believe in theory that is why we are scientists, makes an ice-9 reaction at cern 'very likely'... I wonder how much pression wilczeck and you have not to develop sound physics on that field. No, i know. I know the pressure and warnings i have received but at this point i dont care. I have very clear that this profession like all can be used to make good and evil... What is eviL, the anti-particle of LIve, what makes cern increasingly looking more like teller with his obsession with bigger machines and bigger bombs than einstein is precisely the fact that strange physics is being hidden as the research in H-bombs were, that today the machine, the praxis, matters more than the thought experiments, the info on strangelets that should be explained properly to politicans and the people, so they not us decide if we are risking their lives for our ambitions call a strangelet whatever you want, is the basic physics we will be stdying at cern with some maybe exotic particle out of trillions of QGP and QGM, which we all expect to have or not to have for our ambitious wannabe nobel prices... As you have seen i havent edited in a week, but i expected you to put material new and you dont put anything... That is my view: you can be neutral, you can put your knowledge which will be higher than mine, as i am a relativist working in evolutive models of cosmology and quantum space-time, not in the field of strangelet... but what you cant do is to censor my best trial-info, - so if you are not going to introduce sections on SQP, and SQM, ice-9 fusion or SQM fusion, neutron stars, which are the themes that have been around for a decade, i guess i will restart the editing war. We both know that rhic procuced SQP (in fact CERN probably did before). I mean, im not going to go into a war of quotes and papers. I assume that if you are an expert in the are you know even better than me what happened at rhic, what might happen at lhc according to physics. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Homocion (talk • contribs) 19:51, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

What you keep adding is not correct, which is why I have to keep deleting it. Please stop and let's make a short list of the new points that you want to include.

• As several people have told you on the LHC talk page, the quark gluon plasma as produced at RHIC is not made of strangelets, and has nothing to do with the existence or stability of strangelets. When you say "The experimental evidence on strangelets obtained from RHIC experiments." you are saying something incorrect.
• Concerning the "Chinese theorists", firstly their nationality is irrelevant and should not be mentioned. We don't call Madsen a "Danish theorist" or Witten an "American theorist". Secondly, their results have not been confirmed by others, printed in review articles, or even cited by anyone else. Right now they are unconfirmed speculations, and should not be presented as fact. If you understand their work then I would like to discuss it with you, because there are some things about it that seem wrong to me. Dark Formal (talk) 22:33, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

Please do not delete the reference to searches for strangelets created by cosmic ray impacts. Numerous such searches have been conducted and are cited in the literature. I'll obtain the cites shortly and include them. Oldnoah (talk) 05:19, 19 January 2008 (UTC)Oldnoah

Dark Formal: Hey, you've got 4 citations to the same group! Let's have one citation per proposed search experiment. Also we can't have a ref to a private letter: the whole point of refs is that they are to reputable public sources of information WP:VER. Also I commented out the bit where you say that strangelets get more stable as they get heavier. I don't think this is always true, but we can discuss this here. In addition, some of the refs in that section were duplicates of existing refs. Finally, I'd like to keep the format of the refs consistent, i.e. authors, title, and a link to the published article. This is the standard format of academic journals, and ensures that one can easily scan through and follow up citations. Dark Formal (talk) 00:11, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

Oldnoah Hey, Sorry about the lengthy refs, but I wanted to make certain you were aware they were about the material I said they were about. As to the 4 citations to the same group, I believe the lead author was the same, but he kept getting different people to sign on with him for four different papers about the same thing. Next time, if you'll trust me, I'll just put the main paper. As to "commenting out" the bit about the more massive [higher A] a strangelet gets, the more stable it gets, that is fairly standard theory. I commented it back in. If you don't believe it is standard theory, please give me some cites. I've read hundreds of articles on strange matter, and generally they all agree that the stability increases with increasing mass [whether positive, negative or neutral charge]. If you've got something to the contrary, please enlighten me. Of course, we know that the smallest "strangelet", i.e. the Lambda particle, has a much longer lifetime than had been theorized, but still very very short. I expect the lifetimes will be in the microseconds at around A=5-6, and become on the order of minutes at around A=10-15, but that's just my personal view based on my cursory readings. I don't have any mathematical proof, as of yet. Also, I did one spelling correction, changing 'strangeless' to 'strangeness'. How do you find the time to be constantly monitoring/editing these Wikipedia pages? Don't you have a day job? Regards, Oldnoah (talk) 05:18, 20 January 2008 (UTC)Oldnoah

Dark Formal: OK, you don't have to list abstracts etc in the refs, just put them in the standard form, including a link to the full article so any reader can get the article. So my current requests to you are:

1. Please get rid of the duplicate refs [3] (same as [2]) and [6] (same as [14])
2. Please reduce the 4 refs to Angelis at al down to one.
3. Please remove the private letter ref [22]. It is not publicly verifiable information and violates WP:VER.
4. The statement "increasing the radioactive half-life until with sufficiently large mass, they are fully stable" is not correct. Can you find a citation for it? I expect not, because there is no theory that predicts whether they are stable or not. All theories contain a "bag constant" parameter, which can be made small (stable strangelets) or large (unstable strangelets). It is very hard to determine the correct value of the bag constant, and most researchers treat it as an unknown parameter.

Researching this topic is my day job. But this recent outburst of interest in the strangelet page is wearing me down a bit... Dark Formal (talk) 00:45, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Speculations: dark matter

Wikipedia articles are not venues for speculative questions. However the relationship between stranglets and dark matter is worth commenting on, so I've added something on that. Dark Formal 21:33, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

I reposted an uptodate version of this article. The quotes and models are of earlier 90s, there has been

as per the history of strangelet research in the past 2 decades great advances at theoretical level and at experimental level, since RHIC has consistently produced Strangelet Plasma. So I Introduce important changes to reflect those advances. It is a very much needed update. Please respect it. thanks. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Homocion (talk • contribs) 22:22, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

PLEASE SIGN YOUR CONTRIBUTIONS, you just have to type 4 tildes, it isn't hard.

Your comment above is physically incorrect. RHIC hasn't produced any strangelets. If you disagree, please provide evidence. Dark Formal (talk) 22:28, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

Stranglets in the LHC article

Can anyone verify this please? Cheers ^Khukri 23:04, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

Dark mask you keep just puting back the original skinny article. Strangelets is a theme that requires many pages in a serious encyclopedia, so either you put your own versions or i will keep reposting mine. BE REASONABLE —Preceding unsigned comment added by Homocion (talk • contribs) 02:47, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

You keep adding incorrect material. I am modifying the article in the direction you request, adding more recent refs including a ref to the Chinese group, even though their work is unconfirmed and has had zero impact on the field. I am happy to make the article longer, as long as we add correct material, treated in a balanced fashion. I am disappointed that you persist in making the same mistakes (capital letters for the names of the quarks, asserting that RHIC made strangelets, etc). Dark Formal (talk) 03:17, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

But their maths are correct and they use the same standard bag model than wilzeck, i dont know why they dont have any impact in the field, my impression is that nobody wants to see the obvious as nobody wanted to see the stupidity of ether till einstein came or the idiocy of the higgs particle when we have an alternative sound relativistic theory of mass... i dont think any physicist wants to acknowledge that sound physics make ice-9 quite probable. Now strangelet is an ill defined word, but qgp and qgm are not, and rhic did make gqp —Preceding unsigned comment added by Homocion (talk • contribs) 20:38, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for this post, which is short and clear enough for me to understand the points you are making. Let me try to respond. Do you know that the math in their paper is correct? It might be but I'm not sure. More importantly, are their assumptions correct? At least one of them (that the electron chemical potential is zero inside the strangelet) seems wrong to me. I don't think their result of negatively charged strangelets is "obvious", actually it is rather surprising. The strange matter hypothesis is not "sound physics", it is rampant speculation (and I say this as someone who partly makes his living doing research on strangelets etc!). I agree that RHIC made QGP, and in the process it made a bunch of strange and antistrange quarks, so there some chance that IF strangelets exist then RHIC could have made them. This is what the article currently says. Do you feel that it is not stated clearly? How would you like to change it? Dark Formal (talk) 23:20, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

Dark Formal: I have read Homocions posts, and your erasures. He has a valid point; if you don't like what he posts, you should correct it/fix it, rather than simply constantly erase it. Somewhere above you stated that the RHIC has only made a QGP with up and down quarks. Immediately above this post you state that it makes a QGP with some strange and antistrange quarks [which is what theory suggests should occur]. We already know that some strange quarks are created, because very small particles are emitted from the fireball that subsequently decay because of the strange quark. I believe it is correct to say that a QGP is likely being created at the RHIC, and that some strange quarks are likely being produced in the process. That does not mean that there are as many as, if not more, strange quarks present in the QGP as up and down quarks in the RHIC QGP. It does not mean that they have combined to form a strangelet. I don't believe that that was what Homocion was saying. Rather, what he's trying to get across is the idea that the LHC, when it starts slammin' Lead [comparable to Gold, I'm sure you'll admit], will likely generate a QGP that will have many more strange quarks [because of the greater energy available to 'extract' them from the vacuum] that does the QGP at the RHIC. Thus, the LHC might be able to create strangelets, even though the RHIC presently appears unable to do so.

I tend to believe the theory that such strangelets would be highly radioactive, and not stable, with lifetimes on the order of microseconds if not shorter, due to a presumed low-A of under 10. However, I do NOT know that such is the case. I don't know of any good theory that might even begin to reliably predict an estimated lifetime. I do know that there presently exists an uncertainty as to whether they would be highly unstable, as opposed to having a much lengthier half-life. For that matter, we don't even know if they can coalesce from the QGP in the first place! However, their theoretical inherently greater stability than normal nucleons tends to suggest caution, and that they might well coalesce from a hot QGP IF enough strange quarks are created. I believe that that is Homocion's concern, based on reading what he's written. He has cited extensive references on the subject, and I've read quite extensively myself. IF they can be created, and IF they are quasi-stable, then potentially they could engage in runaway fusion if negatively charged. All they would need would be a lot of low-Z material to fuse to, convert to strange matter, "burp" [phraseology used by RHIC personnel] a positron or two to revert back to negative charge, and fuse again. And, there is a lot of low-Z material at the LHC, namely lots of Hydrogen and lots of Helium surrounding the region where they would potentially be created - conditions not normally present on the moon where a proton striking/tunneling-through an Iron nucleus might also make a much smaller QGP.

While that is a lot of "IF"s, that is Homocion's point - there does appear to be a plausible scenario, even if "unlikely", to create a semi-stable strangelet that cannot presently be shown to be falacious.

Congratulations on your opportunity to have co-authored papers with Dr. Wilczek. His insight way back in 1973 as to the increasing strength of the strong-force with increasing separation of quarks shows that they cannot be isolated, which also apparently allows for the continued existence of Pauli's magnetic monopole theory, which apparently requires no free quarks.

I'm busy at the moment, but will review and determine what edits I should make this weekend. I'll check here first for your comments.

Regards, Oldnoah (talk) 04:05, 18 January 2008 (UTC)OldNoah

Dark Formal: Thanks for your contribution to this discussion. Firstly, I have no objections to the material that you've just added to the strangelet article, although I haven't yet checked your summary of the Busza et al "RHIC is safe" article. Secondly, about Homocion's posts, I have no objection to text that says heavy-ion colliders might make strangelets, that negatively charged strangelets could consume the earth, and that although the generally accepted models of strangelets predict positive charge, there are claims that they might be negative. As for the stability of strangelets, there is no theory that predicts whether they are stable or not. All theories contain a "bag constant" parameter, which can be made small (stable strangelets) or large (unstable strangelets). It is very hard to determine the correct value of the bag constant, and most researchers treat it as an unknown parameter. So any claim that a group has "shown" that strangelets are stable is highly suspect. I believe that the article already presents an accurate and balanced picture. Of course, it could be improved, and I'm happy to help this process forward.

What I am most concerned about is correctness and balance. Wikipedia should present an honest account of the current state of conventional, generally-accepted scientific knowledge. That is WP:VER. We can't give equal space in wikipedia to one group's unconfirmed and uncited speculation than to the whole of the rest of the strangelet literature, even if we think that group is right. Wikipedia is a passive record of the conventional view, not a forum for original research or advocacy. We should mention alternative viewpoints, but not give them undue weight. Dark Formal (talk) 22:28, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

So i added some correctness 'of the current state' of knowledge on strangelets and stars. Let us be frank, strange matter is no longer a hypothesis, but a theory, and as a theory as reputable as infinite other theories, whih cannot be directly verified as we cannot go closer to a neutron star. By this i mean it is today more reputable among cosmologists to treat all quark stars as made with a strangelet center. And the key question again is this: Do also the surface of those stars is made at vacuum pressure of strangelets? If so we are over. The strangelet will be stable. or 'Do only the center under huge pressure is made of stable strangelets?' Again my suggestion to LHC and all other researchers in the field like dark formal is to be patient, spend money in telescopes and find out first without danger, if strangelets are stable, if MBH are stable The rest is on my view pure madness, born out of the eternal arrogance of our microbial (in cosmological terms) species. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.160.106.180 (talk) 23:13, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

Dark Formal: Sorry, but I had to undo your addition because it just wasn't true. You claimed that strange matter exists and cited Jaikumar et al. I know that paper very well, it is an outstanding piece of research. Its abstract says "Strange quark stars are hypothetical compact stars which could exist if strange quark matter was absolutely stable." They do not as any point say that strange matter is stable, it is clearly a hypothesis, as is currently written in the strangelet article. Dark Formal (talk) 23:25, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

Oldnoah Thanks for cleaning up my references, Dark Formal. It reads much better. I wasn't certain how much of the article I should refer, and there is no need for multiple numbering for the same reference. I'll try to follow your format in the future.

As to Homocion's posts, he is obviously very well read, but sometimes 'advances an agenda'. Also, his English grammar and spelling as I noted before is sometimes a little 'off' [likely because his first language is French, as I recall that he wrote in another post]. It is, however, a major question as to whether neutron stars are actually strange stars. I believe that such might well be the case, but we simply don't know yet. It might be that they have an up-down-strange-quark interior, with an up-down-quark exterior, but I simply don't know, and I don't believe we have the evidence yet to decide that issue. Or do you have better, more recent information? Homocion notes correctly, I believe, that if they are full strange stars [interior through to the exterior crust], then that immediately implies that strange matter behaves with an ice-nine fusion capability.

What's the easiest way for me to upload that Letter I reference from Aymar and Engelen? I have it on my hard drive, and can email it to anyone who wants it. Can I publish it as an exact copy in Wikipedia in this article, so I don't get the reference kicked for it being a private letter? If you'd like, you could send me an email to mbbg2005@hotmail.com and I'll email you the letter. Also, I read that Aymar will be replaced in 2009 with a fellow from Germany, I believe. Regards, Oldnoah (talk) 22:57, 26 January 2008 (UTC)Oldnoah

Dark Formal: I agree with everything you said. Did you notice that I added a citation to the recent Watts and Reddy paper that offers some evidence that neutron stars are not strange stars. As far as I know there isn't any evidence that they are strange stars, so I think it is fair to say that the issue is still undecided, although leaning towards the non-existence of strange stars. That's why I find some of Homocion's contributions a bit over-stated, because they tend to say that strangelets definitely or probably exist.

As for the letter, I'm afraid you can't publish it in Wikipedia. The whole point of wikipedia is that it is just a record of what has already been published and confirmed by others (WP:NOR and WP:VER). Also it isn't ethical to publish other peoples work without consulting them. You'd have to get the authors to publish it somewhere themselves, under their own names. Then it could be referred to in wikipedia. Remember, wikipedia is not a vehicle for advancing human knowledge, it is just a place to collect stuff that is already public knowledge. Dark Formal (talk) 23:33, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

Oldnoah: OK about the letter. The public report should be out soon anyway. As to strangelets becoming more stable with increasing A, here's what the old 1998 Joshua Holden article [cited generally in the references at the bottom of the article by others] states: " ... strange matter becomes increasingly stable with A." Likewise, lots of other articles I've read show the same. However, as you note, by changing the bag parameters then possibly the stability is not there. I do believe that that is the prevailing view, i.e. that strangelet stability increases with increasing A. I don't mind if you discuss the issue, but I don't believe you should simply delete my statements in that regard because there are now other papers which might show that is not the case. Rather, you should clarify by showing that some theories show strangelets to be unstable at any A [which would mean we would never see them in searches of moon rocks, for example; though we might detect them in cosmic ray showers]. I'll give you a few days to put some of that back in. It is important, because if strangelets are stable at increasing A, but highly radioactive at the A that nature can produce, then perhaps we might make stable strangelets at the LHC, but not in nature. I am not fully persuaded that high-E proton impacts on Iron [as on the mooon] are qualitatively the same as high-E Lead-Lead impacts as at the LHC, even if quantitatively the same energies. Oldnoah (talk) 04:09, 29 January 2008 (UTC)Oldnoah

Dark Formal: I have added a summary of current research on how stability varies with size. Let me know if there are other papers that should be mentioned. As to your doubts about cosmic ray impacts vs LHC impacts, I reiterate that wikipedia is a passive record of existing reputably published material. If you have new insights on this then you should get them published in Phys Rev or somewhere like that. Dark Formal (talk) 22:44, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Accelerator production

Recommend putting a link to the CERN special report that deals with the potential for production of strangelets at RHIC. http://doc.cern.ch//archive/electronic/hep-ph/9910/9910333.pdf Rgds. Caraski (talk) 21:01, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the suggestion. Actually, it is already in there, currently ref [18] (look for the "hep-ph/9910333" identifier). Dark Formal (talk) 22:58, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Detection

The article doesn't say much about how strangelets would actually be detected. It talks about the seismic tests, but doesn't explain anything about how accelerator events can be analyzed for evidence of strangelets. What are the observational signatures of strangelets?--76.93.42.50 (talk) 00:26, 12 April 2008 (UTC) Looking at one of the references, it looks like the main signature is a small charge to mass ratio. I've added a statement to that effect.--76.93.42.50 (talk) 00:45, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

Nonzero pressure

The article doesn't egxplicitly say so, but I assume the strange matter hypothesis only applies to zero pressure. I think this could be expanded on. It discusses the idea that, under the strange matter hypothesis, neutron stars would be converted into strange matter by chance impacts of strangelets. But don't most modern models of neutron stars say that neutron stars have strange-matter cores anyway? If so, then why would you need a collision with a strangelet?--76.93.42.50 (talk) 00:30, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

A strangelet is a stand-alone lump of quark matter, so its surface is at zero pressure, so strangelets only exist if strange matter is stable at zero pressure. So in this article there is no reason to discuss the appearance of strange matter at high pressure (which, as you say, is much less controversial). I think there is some discussion of this in other articles, eg quark matter.Dark Formal (talk) 02:59, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

The existence of strange baryon matter in the cores of neutron stars for the first time was pointed out by V. A Ambartsumyan and G. S. Saakyan, Astron. Zh. 37, 193 (1960). The presence of hyperons facilitates the formation of strange quark matter. A phase transition into the quark phase with the persistence of flavors comes first, then weak reactions restore the chemical balance. Such critical density is above the saturation density and is higher than that required for a phase transition into strange quark matter in the ß-equilibrium. The ß-equilibrium density, e.g., may be lower than the saturation density. A direct transition into the phase of the ß-equilibrated strange quark matter is not possible, since the critical seed contains excessive amount of strange quarks. If a neutron star mass increases, e.g., due to accretion from a companion, a core of the ß-equilibrated strange quark matter can appear (depending on the equation of state). Gerasime (talk) 18:03, 9 July 2010 (UTC)

dark matter

'Strangelets have been suggested as a dark matter candidate.[2]' -- is dubious because the hypotheses in the referenced article seem to confuse bound vs unbound dark matter. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.231.208.23 (talk) 07:42, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Dangers

LOL! read through the beginning. Strange matter = Tiberium! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 193.157.229.76 (talk) 16:34, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

Comprehensibility

Shouldn't an article in a non-specialist encyclopedia be written so that a layman can understand it? That's more difficult to do than writing what we have here, but it isn't impossible.

86.129.121.132 (talk) 16:30, 8 August 2008 (UTC) (a non-scientist)

Lead

Can we change "hypothetical object" to "hypothetical subatomic particles" or something? Readers knowing nothing about the subject could be excused for thinking that strangelets are stuff like unicorns, gods and Mickey Mouse, according to the current definition. 58.88.53.246 (talk) 23:19, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Stability

It is written that they have a kind of stability increasing with size. Please write why they can be stable. Normally small strangelets like the Sigma baryon and the Xi baryon have lifetimes less than a nanosecond. If they aren't stable they can't grow can they?--BIL (talk) 20:22, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

Accelerator production

Hi, it has been pointed out on the Talk page of the Safety of the LHC article that the section on accelerator production of this article can be misleading. It seems to suggest that, due to the LHC's higher energy, strangelet production is more likely to occur at the LHC than at the RHIC, while in fact the opposite is true (see the related section in the Safety article). Does anybody want to take action on this? Cheers, Ptrslv72 (talk) 18:22, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

Good point. I think it is now stated correctly. Dark Formal (talk) 20:40, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

Lattice QCD vs. stable strange matter

I least wanted to spoil the fun for the audience, since I love the hypothesis of strange matter, too. However, new lattice data made me thinking of the old paper by Kondratyuk et al. where constraints for the critical temperature of phase transition into the quark-gluon plasma are derived from the condition of stability of strange matter.

Today, lattice QCD calculates the critical temperature with good accuracy and this temperature T_c = 192 ± 11 MeV is noticeably higher than T_c < 122 ± 7 MeV required for stability of strange matter.

Perhaps this news can add optimism to all the guys who are afraid of being eaten one day by strange matter.

If somebody knows recent analysis of the relationship between the binding energy of strange matter and T_c , please, drop me a link.

Gerasime (talk) 08:22, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

Dark Formal: I deleted your material on the KMK paper. Let's discuss its merits here on the talk page. The KMK paper has been cited a total of 3 times. That does not make it part of the accepted wisdom of the field. In principle, Wikipedia is a tertiary source that should really only cite reviews of established knowledge in each field. One can stretch that criterion to include highly-cited and generally accepted research papers, but this one is definitely not in that category. As to the physics, that seems dubious too. KMK assumes that the pressure of quark matter at mu=0 goes as T^4. This is presumably true at temperatures far above the deconfinement scale, but what reason is there to think that it is true when T is of the same order as the strange quark mass or the confinement scale? Dark Formal (talk) 20:54, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

A good style is first to read the material, then discuss and then modify it if necessary. Kondratyuk et al used the model of Farhi and Jaffe, so let me frankly redirect your questions to your colleagues from MIT. If you have more ideas do your own calculation. You will confirm the old limitation T_c < 122 ± 7 MeV and will help the audience to further strengthen the optimism against "strange" threats. The contradiction between the lattice data and strange matter hypothesis is strong and verifiable. Is not this the reason why you want to hide this information? Gerasime (talk) 08:53, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

Dark Formal: You did not address my points. KMK's assumption that the pressure of quark matter at mu=0 goes as T^4 is not well motivated. They failed to establish any connection between high T and high mu, and hence between the strange matter hypothesis and current lattice results. This is probably the reason their paper has not been cited much. Wikipedia is about accepted knowledge, not obscure and not-generally-accepted claims: KMK's paper is not part of the accepted knowledge of the field, and does not belong in Wikipedia. Concerning "hiding information": there is no effort in the article to hide that fact that the strange matter hypothesis is unproven and may well be incorrect.
By the way, why not adopt a proper username and use it consistently, so that your track record and reputation is visible? Dark Formal (talk) 03:07, 29 May 2010 (UTC)

Have you still not found an answer to your question? A surface search in the literature shows that, e.g., Eqs. (31) of M. I. Gorenstein, M. Ga´zdzicki, and W. Greiner, PRC 72, 024909 (2005) are KMK equations. Having survived 15 years, these equations have good chance to survive longer. Normally you have to work with the literature yourself. The criticism of one guy (sorry for this truism), not based on published works, doesn't have weight.

Until recently the accurate lattice data were not available, so the relationship between T_c and the binding energy of strange matter was not of much interest. Today the situation is different. A good progress to follow.

Gerasime (talk) 07:21, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

Dark Formal: Gorenstein Ga´zdzicki and Greiner do not make any claims about the stability or otherwise of quark matter. They are using what they themselves admit is "the simplest case of non-interacting massless quarks" (before their Eq (21)). In reality the quarks have mass and the QCD interaction is not just bags and so it is not clear that the pressure of quark matter simply goes as T^4 + const at temperatures in the 100 MeV range. Perhaps there are some widely-accepted papers that establish a connection between the strange matter hypothesis and the mu=0 transition temperature: it's up to you to find them, since you're the one making the claim about the relevance of lattice data. Dark Formal (talk) 02:32, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

You are right, the task of persuasion lies with the party that takes action.

I modified the article, I took action and must provide evidence. The original arguments are not accepted, since WP takes a reference to public sources only. I have listed the sources and therefore do not have other obligations. The results are published, smart people enjoy the formulas almost 20 years, the lattice data are available. The demand of new evidence is beyond a reasonable disbelief.

As long as you reverted my edit, you took action also. Your original arguments, too, are not accepted by WP, but unlike me you did not specify any sources. So, you did not meet obligations, your action is arbitrary.

I understand that in scientific terms, there is no objection. Still you can refer to WP policies. Which ones make your action evident?

Gerasime (talk) 18:16, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

Dark Formal: The task of persuasion lies with the person who wants to add material to an article. You haven't addressed my objection to the material you wanted to include. You provided 2 sources. KMK is not widely accepted (not a review article, and too few citations). GGG does not draw the conclusion you want to include. The physics is clear: they both use a very oversimplified model of quark matter (non-interacting massless quarks), and GGG is wise enough not to use such a model to make any quantitative claims about the stability of quark matter. If WP included every claim that is made in any published research article, WP would be choked with junk. You have to provide evidence that what you want to include is part of the generally accepted knowledge of the field. I don't have to provide evidence that it isn't. That's the whole point of WP:V! Dark Formal (talk) 03:11, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

WP:V claims: "The burden of evidence lies with the editor who adds or restores material." In your edition ".... who wants to add material" the second part of the sentence, which tells about your responsibilities, is missing. Your first link to WP policies seems to refute your policy. A promising start.

Gerasime (talk) 13:52, 13 June 2010 (UTC)

Dark Formal: You added material. I deleted it but I neither added nor restored material. (Deleting is not "restoring": restoring is the opposite of deleting.) The burden of evidence lies with you. WP:V is clear. Dark Formal (talk) 03:30, 15 June 2010 (UTC)

You restored the article in its previous form.

I looked again at the work of the GGG. Immediately after Eq. (21) you mentioned, the value of vacuum pressure is provided. It is ten times greater than that required for stable strange matter. A good point to mention in the article. This is about the same what the lattice calculations give.

Gerasime (talk) 09:23, 15 June 2010 (UTC)

Dark Formal: Deleting is not "restoring": WP:V says the burden of proof is on the person who "restores material" i.e. the person who adds previously deleted material, not the person who removes that material (even if they are thereby "restoring the article"). Go and ask an administrator if you don't believe me.

As for the vacuum pressure, I assume you mean what GGG calls the bag constant.

• The bag constant is a parameter in a model. Assuming it has one universal value is another oversimplified assumption. For the model to describe reality accurately this "constant" may well have to vary with density and temperature, so even if one obtained its value at low density and high temperature (the regime accessible to lattice calculations and heavy ion collisions), this would not tell you its value at high density and low temperature (relevant to strangelets). Can you provide a reference to a lattice calculation that directly calculates the value of the bag constant relevant to strangelets?
• There is no such thing as the value required for stable strange matter. It depends on other parameters in the model such as the strange quark mass, and interactions between the quarks in the bag.

Dark Formal (talk) 02:57, 18 June 2010 (UTC)

The vacuum pressure, the vacuum energy density, the energy-momentum trace anomaly, and the MIT bag constant B are synonyms. 3G quote B in QCD sum rules at mu = T = 0. Last years, B in lattice QCD at mu = 0 moved toward the value extracted from QCD sum rules. T dependence of B at mu = 0 is thus weak. mu dependence of B at T = 0 can be discussed. You may want to check Fig. 3 of C. R. Allton et al., Nucl.Phys. Proc.Suppl. 141 (2005) 186-190. The critical quark chemical potential at T = 0 is above 600 MeV.

Take the maximum value of B for stable strange matter over all the parameters. You will end up with a value 10 times lower than that extracted from QCD sum rules and lattice QCD. The difference is too high to talk about typical uncertainties.

Gerasime (talk) 18:53, 18 June 2010 (UTC)

Dark Formal: mu dependence of B at T=0 does not tell us the value of B at mu>300 MeV, given that the typical energy scale of strong interactions is the confinement distance (about 200 MeV), so mu in quark matter is not close to mu=0. Also B is an energy to the 4th power, so for it to vary by a factor of 10 only requires the energy scales on which it depends to vary by a factor of less than 2, so it is not obvious that the difference is beyond "typical uncertainties" which is in any case an ill-defined quantity.

You obviously have a lot of knowledge of this issue, and interesting opinions, and this is a good physics discussion we are having, but it is separate from the question of what should be included in a WP article, namely accepted knowledge from secondary sources ("commonly accepted reference texts", see WP:OR#Neutral point of view, i.e. review articles etc). At this point there is no indication that the material you wanted to include meets those conditions. Dark Formal (talk) 19:49, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

You probably noticed that Allton et al. give the critical temperature 175 MeV, for which the 2KM constraint requires unbound strange matter, with a large margin. Allton et al. thus confirm the same old 2KM constraint. As stated by Voltaire,

Best stomach is not the one that refuses all food.

I didn't meet in WP the term of "accepted knowledge". WP is discussing about primary sources (original works), secondary and tertiary sources to be "presented in rough proportion to the prominence", in accord with common sense etc. The prominence is suited perfectly for the evaluation of poetry. In science, however, it is at variance with the priority, so I would score the priority with at least the same weight.

Anyway, WP permits the use of primary sources for descriptive statements. I make a descriptive statement saying, e.g., that temperature in model A is low and temperature in model B is high. We are not allowed to only draw conclusions from or interpret T(A) < T(B). WP permits taking conclusions from secondary and tertiary sources (reviews & books). This is accepted.

I thus propose to simplify things, restrict with descriptive statements and concentrate ourselves on improving the article, instead of debating around the WP rules.

Gerasime (talk) 18:31, 29 June 2010 (UTC)

Dark Formal: Perhaps you could offer a quote of what exactly you want to add, and we can come to agreement.

WP:OR#Neutral point of view, from which I quoted above, says what should be included in a WP article, namely material from "commonly accepted reference texts", i.e. commonly accepted knowledge. I am not sure what "priority" has to do with it. We are not discussing who made the claim first, but whether the claim belongs in WP. Dark Formal (talk) 11:16, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

One can arrange new section "External links":

• Lattice QC₂D points toward stable quark matter
• Stable strange matter sets an upper limit T_c < 122 ± 7 MeV for temperature of phase transition into quark-gluon plasma
• Temperature of phase transition into quark-gluon plasma T_c = 192 ± 11 MeV from lattice QCD

The first reference tells that in the SU(2) gauge group saturation occurs in the deconfined phase. This gives stability for quark droplets.

Gerasime (talk) 15:41, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

Dark Formal: One problem is that these are not really "external links". From WP:Citing_sources#Use_of_terms: "The terms "Further reading" and "External links" are used as section headings for lists of additional general texts on a topic for those interested." That is the convention used in most WP articles, including this one. The items you suggested are technical articles in the literature, not "general texts". If they contained the generally-accepted state of knowledge in the field they might be used as sources. However...

• The first one is about two-color QCD which is profoundly different from real-world 3-color QCD (e.g. baryons are bosons!), and the authors in their conclusions admit that they are "speculating" and consistently talk about "two-color" quark stars. So this is not accepted knowledge in the field, are required by WP:OR#Neutral point of view.
• The second one we have already discussed: it is an opinion advanced by one almost-uncited paper in the whole literature. Again, it doesn't meet WP's "accepted knowledge" criterion.
• The third one has no relevance to strangelets, since it is all about the quark-gluon plasma at zero net quark density.

I would like to facilitate your efforts to improve the article, but the material you want to include just doesn't meet WP criteria: it has not been shown to be the viewpoint of the majority nor of a significant minority. Dark Formal (talk) 15:06, 7 July 2010 (UTC)

30 years ago the idea of Witten about the existence of stable strange matter looked new and interesting. Since then, unfortunately, this idea did not develop. Still, the literature discusses developments of the late 80's, which is perhaps naturally, when there is no experimental evidence. As a result, the interesting field acquired features of the science fiction. The dynamic model, in which strange matter was initially described, contradicts to the lattice data at zero chemical potential, moreover, it contradicted to the QCD sum rules always. There are models that claim to describe the physics of the whole mu-T phase region. These models lead to an unstable strange matter, and with a large margin. This WP article does not reflect these facts. However, it is well known that it is very difficult to close an interesting idea, if it occurred once. One can expect therefore new experiments, as well as activity among astrophysicists.

Gerasime (talk) 13:37, 5 September 2010 (UTC)

Dark Formal: I notice you have deleted a big chunk of our debate here.

You replaced it with the para above, in which you say that "There are models that claim to describe the physics of the whole mu-T phase region. These models lead to an unstable strange matter, and with a large margin. This WP article does not reflect these facts.".

This is your opinion, which is fine. But WP does not include all opinions, claims and models put forward by everyone. It includes established views reflecting the scientific consensus and major variants of it, derived from reliable secondary sources ("commonly accepted reference texts", see WP:OR#Neutral point of view, i.e. review articles etc).

So you are welcome to state your opinion here on the talk page. But when it comes to adding stuff to the article itself, please stick to reliably-sourced scientific consensus material that conforms to the WP policies I mentioned above. And I agree with you, it is to be hoped that new experiments and perhaps even theoretical progress will add to the current scientific consensus. And if the consensus comes to be that strange matter is ruled out, this article should say so. Dark Formal (talk) 23:13, 5 September 2010 (UTC)