Strange idea

摘要

The material at the centre of a neutron star isn't stable except under star-mass gravity- it decays into everyday matter as some of the electrons and protons separate out. But now lower energy strange-quark matter is hypothesised to form in a collapsing neutron star (7 December, p 42). If it is indeed lower energy than everyday matter, it should be able to exist without lots of gravity to hold it together. And given that the shock wave of a collapsing neutron star ejects material from the surface, shouldn't there be a large number of lumps of this strange stuff drifting about? The chances are some of this must have fallen to Earth in the past 4 billion years.