
New form of matter may lie just beyond the periodic table - valiant-comma
https://phys.org/news/2018-06-periodic-table.html
======
ChuckMcM
_" If quark matter is found (or produced in accelerators), it may be stored
and then fed with slow neutrons or heavy ions. The absorption of these
particles means a lower total mass and thus a release of energy, mostly in the
form of gamma radiation. Unlike nuclear fusion, this is a process that should
be easy to initiate and control." \-- Bob Holdom_

Oh really? Does the paper give any idea about how that might be accomplished
and where the energy would come from?

EDIT: Ok, I read the paper (it is pretty short) and now I'm tracking down this
reference: [34] G. L. Shaw, M. Shin, R. H. Dalitz, and M. Desai, Growing drops
of strange matter, Nature (London) 337, 436 (1989).

~~~
time-of-flight
Neutrons are a pain to control as a beam because they have no charge, so
methods employing electric or magnetic optics are not applicable. Typical
pocket sources use the alpha(9Be,12C)n reaction to produce neutrons; if you
have a reactor handy, you can moderate (slow) the neutrons produced and use
them... this would be by far the most economical option.

As a nuclear chemistry PhD, I am highly skeptical of the practicality of this
as an energy source.

~~~
garmaine
You'd just just a neutron reflector to shape an omnidirectional source, right?

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rwallace
Neutron stars would presumably consist in large part of QM, if it exists.

Colliding neutron stars spray large chunks of material therefrom, into
interstellar space. It is said that this contributes a significant percentage
of the gold and uranium on Earth.

If QM were stable, would we not therefore expect to observe it in nature, with
abundance at least on the order of gold and uranium? Perhaps there is some
factor that depresses its abundance somewhat, but to have gone entirely
unobserved, it would have to be many orders of magnitude less abundant than
gold. Is there any theory that reconciles stable QM with the observed upper
bound on abundance?

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Semirhage
While possible, this seems like an even more tenuous argument than usual for
theoretical work on phys.org. The original paper is an ocean of maybe’s and
if’s, all couched in unsupported models that may well have no bearing on
reality. I’m also a little turned off by the term “continent of stability”
which sounds like a grandiose rephrasing of the more commonly hypothesized
“island of stability” further down the table. That island is very much
hypothetical, and the stability referenced is in comparison to other super
heavy elements, not matter in general.

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zamalek
I couldn't find anything on the expected half-life of udQM in the paper, just
how stable are we talking here? The theoretical "island of stability" is only
relatively stable (minutes to days) and useless for practical applications.

~~~
vinceguidry
The article did say that udQM could come in via cosmic rays, this would have
to be quite stable over the thousands of years it would take such rays to get
to us.

~~~
igravious
So what is the QM that is found in colliders? “When produced in a collider,
quark matter typically decays within a fraction of a second into stable
hadronic matter (with bound quarks).” Obviously not udQM, right?

~~~
time-of-flight
The udQM they're talking about is in a very different regime than the quark
matter produced at RHIC (Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider) and other colliders.
In those, heavy ions are collided ultrarelativistically (speed just under C)
and for a very brief instant, quarks and gluons are liberated from their
confinement inside proton and neutrons to become quark-gluon plasma, or QGC.
There are up and down quarks just like in normal protons/neutrons, but also
other quarks can be created (strange being the most common). At high enough
energies and with particular kinematics, you can make all six quark types: see
BaBar experiment, LHC, Stanford Linear Accelerator (SLAC) experiments.

In the paper, they're talking about udQM being more stable at _zero
temperature and pressure_ , basically "competing" with normal elements. The
wiki diagram is useful for reference:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quark%E2%80%93gluon_plasma#/me...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quark%E2%80%93gluon_plasma#/media/File:Phases_of_Nuclear_Matter.JPG)

~~~
a1369209993
Link to diagram is broken, correct link here:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Phases_of_Nuclear_Matter....](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Phases_of_Nuclear_Matter.JPG)

Apparently wikipedia uses some sort of horrible AJAX crap now; please check
that your links work before posting them.

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Sniffnoy
Very interesting. Would it be correct to say that if true this could lead to
an earlier end of the periodic table[0] than had been previously predicted?

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extended_periodic_table#End_of...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extended_periodic_table#End_of_the_periodic_table)

~~~
time-of-flight
Yes, one could phrase it that way... but keep in mind that all these
theoretical models suggesting an "end to the table" make huge assumptions that
are not well-grounded in experimental results. We don't even know where the
neutron dripline is for light systems (Z=12), much less the high end of the
table (Z=100+).

The periodic table is only a useful model (and it is very useful) for nuclear
systems acting as a zero-temperature Fermi gas (e.g., nuclei here on Earth).
At extremes of temperature and pressure (neutron star merger, say), the idea
of a discrete periodic table loses meaning.

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princekolt
The comments on the article poked at this question but the answers given there
were not very clear for me, so I'll ask here: If this udQM is so stable, why
didn't we find any of it in nature so far?

We certainly would know we don't understand this matter if we stumbled upon
it... right?

~~~
Isinlor
We actually might have already stumbled upon it: [https://www.centauri-
dreams.org/2017/03/28/the-challenges-of...](https://www.centauri-
dreams.org/2017/03/28/the-challenges-of-przybylskis-star/)

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KayAar
If this udQM with A above 300 were stable it would have been produced in
neutron star collissions, along with other heavy elements such as Au, and
there should be traces of it in the earth. So far no such udQM has been found.

~~~
teilo
Hard to find something when you are not looking for it, and don't know what it
looks like.

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pavel_lishin
Neat. Reminds me of the smartmatter from world of Anathem.

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inetknght
This page, or something it loads, is causing Firefox to use 100% CPU.
Cryptocurrency malware, perhaps?

~~~
drak0n1c
physorg has been a very popular site ever since 2004 and well respected for
its compilation of scientific and technical papers. It's probably not malware
- a more reasonable and common explanation for bad CPU performance is that one
of the web or ad frameworks they use is poorly made.

~~~
GW150914
Well respected? It takes in science (sometimes) and futurist hype (mostly) and
belches out something resembling pop science. There are quite a few decent
sites that turn papers and headlines into brief articles, but Physorg is _not_
one of them. They are to science what clickbait is to news.

~~~
gmueckl
Do you have references to sites that are good in your opinion? I am looking
for better ways to keep track of progress outside my area of expertise.

~~~
GW150914
Sorry for the late reply!

[https://www.sciencenews.org](https://www.sciencenews.org)

[http://www.sciencemag.org](http://www.sciencemag.org)

[https://www.nature.com](https://www.nature.com)

[https://www.eurekalert.org](https://www.eurekalert.org)

[https://physicsworld.com](https://physicsworld.com)

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Sniffnoy
Non-mobile link: [https://phys.org/news/2018-06-periodic-
table.html](https://phys.org/news/2018-06-periodic-table.html)

~~~
sctb
Thanks! Updated.

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jonsen
_... quark matter has the potential to be used as a new source of energy_

A new kind of weapon? Renewing the nuclear arms race?

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sametmax
What would be the point ? We can already destroy a medium country with a few
nukes. We probably have enough nukes to blow the entire planet.

What would a bigger boom accomplish ?

