Strangelets - Dangerously Strange !!

Strangelets. That would sound strange to most of you, but what If I told you it could be one of the less realistic doomsday scenario. Less realistic, but realistic alright. I wasn’t aware of these strange particles till recently, when I came across it in one of my random Internet searches.

So, what are Strangelets? They are fragments of “strange matter”, which is a hypothetical form of quark (i.e. fundamental constituent of matter) matter, that contains an equal number of up, down and strange quarks. It is also supposedly more stable than an ordinary nuclei.

How is it possibly dangerous? Strangelets are created at low energies and are stable only at low temperatures. Though particle accelerators like CERN’s Large Hadron Collider operate at very higher energies than any previous similar attempts, there still might be a possibility of Strangelet creation within the collider. This strangelet or “strange matter” when comes in contact with a nucleus, It gets converted into strange matter as well. Though, the strange matter decays in microseconds, In ideal, suitable conditions, this would give way to a chain reaction where everything the strangelet comes in contact with , turns into strange matter. This will continue till the entire earth turns into one huge lump of strange matter.

Artist's impression of how a Strange Earth could look like

As far-fetched as it may sound, Scientists believe it is theoretically possible. Scientists also believe that a Strangelet Earth will not have conditions hospitable enough for human life to survive. So, In future, If you find something strange about the terrain around you, book your tickets and shoot your way to the Moon.

P.S - Apologies for any scientific inaccuracies.