Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A hypothetical particle or small body of strange matter that may be as large or larger than an atomic nucleus but smaller than a neutron star.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun physics A proposed
fragment ofstrange matter .
Etymologies
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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A shower of quarks in a particle accelerator self-reassembled into "a very compressed object called a strangelet [that] would keep growing until all matter was converted to strange matter"?
Very Bad News Geertz, Clifford 2005
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Other opponents have also sought to stop the collider, fearing either a black hole whose super-gravity would swallow the Earth or a theoretical particle called a strangelet that would turn the planet to goo.
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A strangelet is a hypothetical particle that has an up quark, a down quark, and a strange quark - or at least equal numbers of them in that ratio.
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CERN scientists have ruled out fears that the process could create a black hole whose super-gravity would swallow the Earth, or a theoretical particle called a strangelet that would turn the planet into goo.
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Prior to the launch, the internet was abuzz with rumours that the particle accelerator could create black holes or an as-yet hypothetical particle called a strangelet that would grow and destroy the earth.
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Before the startup, Internet-driven rumours said the LHC would create black holes or a nasty hypothetical particle called a strangelet that would gobble up the planet.
Jules Crittenden 2008
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Another wild idea: The LHC might produce something called a strangelet that could convert our planet into a lump of dead "strange matter."
Livescience.com 2008
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In fact, the LHC offers some of the very same concerns in and out of the HEP community that Brookhaven's RHIC provoked awhile back – you remember, the possibility that a 'strangelet' might be created that would cause a universal phase shift, alter the false vacuum state and/or otherwise bring an immediate end to all things.
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"black hole" whose super-gravity would swallow the Earth, or a theoretical particle called a strangelet that would turn the planet to goo.
News24 2008
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Or it could spit out something called a "strangelet" that would convert our planet to a shrunken dense dead lump of something called "strange matter."
john commented on the word strangelet
"There’s an ion collider in Long Island named Rhic that critics thought might create something called strangelets, which have similar earth-gobbling talents to black holes. One report estimated that the possibility of strangelets popping up was only 1 in 50 million — odds that Dennis Overbye noted in The Times were actually more favorable than some government-sponsored lotteries.
Still, we’ve had the collider in the New York metropolitan area for some time now with no ill effects and have turned our attention to more important projects, such as never finishing construction of the 9/11 memorial. If there are any strangelets, they have adapted and merged into the general population. Some of them are no doubt running for the State Legislature at this very moment."
The New York Times, Digging Ourselves a Black Hole, by Gail Collins, August 23, 2008
August 23, 2008
reesetee commented on the word strangelet
No doubt!
August 24, 2008