LHC@home

Interesting thread about the negatively charged metastable strangelets. Considering the destructive effect that such a particle has on the mass around it, has such a particle ever existed?

And further, if such a particle is theoretically possible, are there other particles, either theoretical or experimentally created, that have not existed in nature? Either now, or during the first few moments of the Big Bang?

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Interesting thread about the negatively charged metastable strangelets. Considering the destructive effect that such a particle has on the mass around it, has such a particle ever existed?

And further, if such a particle is theoretically possible, are there other particles, either theoretical or experimentally created, that have not existed in nature? Either now, or during the first few moments of the Big Bang?

It is commonly assumed that any particle that could exist will exist when the temperature is high enough, and when the density of other particles is high enough. As both these figures go all the way up to infinity as you get back to the time of the big bang, it follows that all theoretically possible particles did exist at some point in the very very early universe.

If our theories of the big bang are right of course ;)


edit: ***however***

strangelets are not particles in the fundamental sense, but collections of more fundamental particles. At high temperatures they are as likely to be smashed apart into their component quarks as to come together. That is why (for example) oridnary protons did not exist very early, not till the temperature dropped to the point where their three component quarks would actually stay together, and much later on, Hydrogen atoms did not exist till the temperature dropped below about 3000K, as before that any H atom would be instantly re-ionised.

So while we can say that fundamental particles (Higgs, gravitons) would have existed very early on, whether a compound particle like a stranglet would have done depends on whether the 'creation window' when there was enough energy / density to create them closed before or after the 'destruction window' when the effects of the same temperature & pressure would have kept them unstable.

So there you are - the answer is "it all depends" ...

Wow scientists must be running out of imagination. strangelets? ROLF.

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