Re: Strange Matter as Planetary Warfare
Robin Hanson (hanson@dosh.hum.caltech.edu)
Mon, 16 Sep 96 10:53:44 PDT
Anders Sandberg writes:
>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 more
>> 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).
>Fortunately this appears unlikely, since supernovae and black holes
>doesn't seem to have broken the vacuum, and they are much more energetic.
These are two different fears. Strange matter would not expand at the
speed of light, but should only convert other nuclei matter it comes into
direct physical contact with.
Robin Hanson hanson@hss.caltech.edu http://hss.caltech.edu/~hanson/