I saw a part of discover magazine (march 2006, page 13) mentions strangelets and strange matter. Does anyone have any insite into what this is cause the article doesn't explain. Links are helpful but I'm really overbooked at school so I probably wont be able to read anything real long and involved. I'm just looking for a general idea of what strange matter is, why we think it exists and what research is being done on it. Thanks.

http://www.scienceforums.net/forums/showthread.php?t=16896&highlight=strange+matter

Basically, there are six quarks:

 

u up

d down

c charm

s strange

t top

b bottom

 

strange matter are particles which have a strange quark

 

It is called this because, before the quark theory was developed, the interactions of these particles seemed very strange to scientists. That's because a principle called "strangeness" was conserved where every particle had a strangeness number, and in every reaction the number stayed the same. The quark theory tells us that's because the number of strange quarks is conserved.

 

EDIT:

 

oh yeah, and there is an antiquark for every quark too. the strange antiquark has a strangeness of -1

Basically' date=' there are six quarks:

 

u up

d down

c charm

s strange

t top

b bottom

 

strange matter are particles which have a strange quark

 

It is called this because, before the quark theory was developed, the interactions of these particles seemed very strange to scientists. That's because a principle called "strangeness" was conserved where every particle had a strangeness number, and in every reaction the number stayed the same. The quark theory tells us that's because the number of strange quarks is conserved.

 

EDIT:

 

oh yeah, and there is an antiquark for every quark too. the strange antiquark has a strangeness of -1[/quote']

 

IIRC strangeness is not necessarily conserved in weak interactions; reactions that violate the conservation tend to have longer lifetimes.

 

More from hyperphysics

http://www.scienceforums.net/forums/showthread.php?t=16896&highlight=strange

IIRC strangeness is not necessarily conserved in weak interactions; reactions that violate the conservation tend to have longer lifetimes.

 

That is because interactions which change isospin must be mediated by a W-boson, which is very heavy and difficult to produce. (QCD and QED both preserve isospin.)