Re: Strange Matter as Planetary Warfare

Anders Sandberg (nv91-asa@nada.kth.se)
Mon, 16 Sep 1996 17:03:01 +0200 (MET DST)


On Wed, 11 Sep 1996, Chris Hind wrote:

> I've read about past fears that building increasingly powerful particle
> accelerators have the potential to create strange matter which is a mor=
e
> stable form of matter that would instantly convert all matter around it=
into
> this new form. Is there any potential of this occurring?

Well, the main fears have been that our vacuum state is a false vacuum wi=
th
higher energy than "true vacuum". A fluctuation might cause it to tunnel =
into
true vacuum in a small region, releasing immense amounts of energy, chang=
ing
the parameters of our physics and spreading with the speed of light (i.e.=
A
Bad Thing).=20

Fortunately this appears unlikely, since supernovae and black holes=20
doesn't seem to have broken the vacuum, and they are much more energetic.=
=20
If this is possible, it probably requires either absurdly large amounts=20
of energy or clever "sabotage" (reminds me of _Rymdv=E4ktaren_ by Nilsson=
,=20
where various entities try to prevent some kind of being from sabotaging=20
the laws of physics using "poisoned information").=20

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Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension!
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