ST. LOUIS, Dec. 20 (UPI) -- U.S. physicists say their research suggests there might be much to be discovered in the universe that could be extremely strange.
The "Strange Matter Hypothesis" that gained popularity during the 1980s suggests small conglomerations of quarks -- the infinitesimally tiny particles that attract by a strong nuclear force to form neutrons and protons in atoms -- are the true ground state of matter.
That theory intrigued particle physicists worldwide, including Washington University's Mark Alford and colleagues who have used mathematical modeling to find some properties of theoretical "strange stars" composed entirely of quark matter.
Alford, an assistant professor of physics -- along with collaborators from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Lawrence Berkeley and Los Alamos national laboratories -- found that under the right conditions the surface of a strange star could fragment into blobs of quark material called "strangelets," forming a rigid halo that contradicts traditional strange star models.
That, the scientists said, means collapsed stars' nuclear leftovers, such as the famously resplendent Crab Nebula, might be much stranger than physicists think.
Alford and colleagues detailed their complex research in a recent issue of Physical Review D.
