| Submit your comments on this article |
| Home Front: Tech |
| Earth punctured by tiny cosmic missiles |
| 2005-08-15 |
| EFL FORGET dangers from giant meteors: Earth is facing another threat from outer space. Scientists have come to the conclusion that two mysterious explosions in the 1990s were caused by bizarre cosmic missiles. The two objects were picked up by earthquake detectors as they tore through Earth at up to 900,000 mph. According to scientists, the most plausible explanation is that they were "strangelets", clumps of matter that have so far defied detection but whose existence was posited 20 years ago. Formed in the Big Bang and inside extremely dense stars, strangelets are thought to contain "strange quarks", particles normally only seen in high-energy accelerators. Strangelets - sometimes also called strange-quark nuggets I think I ate that brand as a kid - are predicted to have many unusual properties, including a density about ten million million times greater than lead. Just a single pollen-size fragment is believed to weigh several tons. They are thought to be extremely stable, travelling through the galaxy at speeds of about a million miles per hour. If they're so stable, why do they hate us? A team of American scientists believes that it may have found the first hard evidence for the existence of strangelets. The scientists looked for events producing two sharp signals, one as it entered Earth, the other as it emerged again. They found two such events, both in 1993. The first was on the morning of October 22. Seismometers in Turkey and Bolivia recorded a violent event in Antarctica that packed the punch of several thousand tons of TNT. The disturbance then ripped through Earth on a route that ended with it exiting through the floor of the Indian Ocean off Sri Lanka just 26 seconds later - implying a speed of 900,000 mph. The second event took place on November 24, when sensors in Australia and Bolivia picked up an explosion starting in the Pacific south of the Pitcairn Islands and travelling through Earth to appear in Antarctica 19 seconds later. According to the scientists, both events are consistent with an impact with strangelets at cosmic speeds. "The only explanation for such events of which we are aware is passage through the earth of ton-sized strange-quark nuggets." Professor Eugene Herrin, a member of the team, said that two strangelets just one-tenth the breadth of a hair would account for the observations. "These things are extremely dense and travel at 40 times the speed of sound straight through the Earth - they'd hardly slow down as they went through." The good news is that, despite their force, the impact of strangelets on an inhabited area would, probably, be less violent than that of a meteor. Prof Herrin said: "It's very hard to determine what the effect would be. There would probably be a tiny crater but it would be virtually impossible to find anything." Scientists say that the discovery of strangelets would be a significant breakthrough, solving several long-standing mysteries. These include the nature of "dark matter", which, astronomers say, makes up more than 90 per cent of our galaxy. Prof Frank Close, a particle physicist at Oxford University, said that confirmation of the events was crucial. "The first step is to see if one can find more examples and eliminate all other interpretations," he said. "If you're looking for very exotic and rare events, you need to be able to tell if it's the real thing or just an artefact." |
| Posted by:Jackal |
| #9 Jihadis take note - first successful test of the eeevilll Zionist death ray. |
| Posted by: DMFD 2005-08-15 23:14 |
| #8 I thought a strangelet was the kinkier of a set of twins.... |
| Posted by: Frank G 2005-08-15 22:44 |
| #7 Hot damn! These are interesting times indeed. |
| Posted by: docob 2005-08-15 21:56 |
| #6 I really liked quark nuggets... |
| Posted by: Raj 2005-08-15 21:55 |
| #5 Interesting. Anybody here expert enough at seismology to know if they've got their background rate estimate right? |
| Posted by: James 2005-08-15 21:28 |
| #4 "...packed the punch of several thousand tons of TNT..." I'm predicting a strangelet will hit Qom, Iran sometime soon. Act of God. Not our problem. |
| Posted by: Darrell 2005-08-15 21:13 |
| #3 Ah, yet another excuse to use when calling in sick to work: "I got penetrated by a strangelet, boss, so I'll be laid up until next week." |
| Posted by: Jonathan 2005-08-15 20:59 |
| #2 Shhh, Tibor. Tonguska was the first Halliburton Strange Schtuff Generator test - or so I'm told. Personally, I rather like strange schtuff, but I haven't encountered any who are quite that fast - or dense. Just curious, does anyone think he is breathing (or trying to) life back into the rubber-band theory with the dark matter / strangelet density reference? Last I heard, that had been discredited / discarded / kaputed / pooh-de-poohed. |
| Posted by: .com 2005-08-15 20:05 |
| #1 Even though this happened in 1993, I blame George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. Also, I'm sure Haliburton is involved somehow. |
| Posted by: Tibor 2005-08-15 19:53 |