Strange Matter: So Stable it's Contagious
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Published 2022-12-05
Today we are going to look at a particularly strange form of matter, literally called strange matter, and it’s contagious. It’s so stable that all matter in the universe might want to be strange. Let’s find out more.
First let’s think about matter.
What we call normal matter, although we don’t even call it normal matter, we just call it matter, is made from atoms and as I’ve already mentioned in a number of videos, atoms are made from protons, neutrons and electrons and even the protons and neutrons are made from smaller particles called quarks. Neutrons are made from 1 up and 2 down quarks and protons are made from 2 up and 1 down quark. So all the matter that we can see and normally associate with the term matter is made up of just 2 types of quark and electrons. So what about other types of quark, well quarks are quite strange things.
Firstly, quarks come in different flavours (I know, physicists are weird), and there are 6 flavours, they are up and down, and those are the ones we are familiar with, but there are others. There are also top and bottom quarks, and finally we have strange and charm quarks. There are also corresponding antiquarks for each of the 6 flavours.
Chapters
0:00 Introduction
0:50 Quarks
1:35 Mesons & Baryons
3:45 Strange Matter
4:50 Neutron Stars
6:20 Strange Quarks
7:50 Neutron Star Collisions
8:30 Strangelets
8:45 Strange Matter Spreads
9:20 Does Strange Matter really exist?
All Comments (21)
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How strange matter could convert protons to strange matter reminds me of Kurt Vonnegut's book, "Ice Nine" in which one drop of it freezes all of Earth's oceans to Ice-9.
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Strange matter is only stable in YouTube videos. Watching them makes you strange as well. Commenting on them makes you even stranger and then you turn other people strange when you talk to them.
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Slight correction: protons are at least that stable. They may have a longer half life or even be completely stable. That's just the upper bound that we can measure.
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The only problem with the animation: due to strange matter's density, the objects will collapse as soon as they are converted. That'd be difficult to animate tho.
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I was wondering about the video’s depiction of Moon, Sun and Earth being transformed into this different form/color… wouldn’t they simultaneously shrink down to a minuscule fraction of their original size, too? It sounded as though strange matter would be really dense…
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The fact that there is a non-zero chance these exist just adds another cosmic horror to the pile.
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Everyone always asks "what's this strange matter?" but no one asks "what's the matter?"
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As someone composed of matter, yes - I can confirm that we all want to be strange.
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I figure that this is one of those things where unless it'd already happened, it's probably not going to happen. Like the idea that all electrons in your body would in unison re-fuse with all your protons, and you just become neutron sludge, is a chance so infinitesimally small and unlikely that it really shouldn't even be considered theoretical. Even in environments where it could be considered unlikely, those environments would kill you so hard anyway that knowing exactly how it happened is more of a matter of sick curiosity than it is anything constructive.
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If ultra-stable matter (more stable than neutrons and protons) could exist, it would exist. And it would be everywhere. Ultra-stable would have been formed during the inflation process of the universe, and it would be the predominant kind of matter there is. That isn't the case.
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Maybe strange matter isn't as voracious as you described. If it maintained it's density after being ejected, It wouldn't have the mass necessary to impose it's density upon other matter. Maybe through direct contact you could push material into it? Like, a strange meteorite might just pass through a planet, leaving a neat hole. Or, the friction from the event might result in planetary bodies absorbing strange matter. Maybe primordial black holes as well. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if these hyper-dense materials play a role in the formation of planetary systems. Very thought provoking stuff. You earned my subscription.
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I look forward to your proposed episode on quarks. I would also like to know what role the neutrino plays in the neutron particle. The weak force decay cycle and half-lives of matter. I hope to see more.
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The strange quark sounds like a good plot material for a Star Trek episode. The antidote of which will have to be the charmed quark.
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Thanks for the awesome video! Looking forward to seeing an episode on quarks, honestly. There's so much absolutely batshit stuff about the universe, I don't think you're going to run out of source materials any time soon. 😀
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I've just come across your channel and have been binge watching. Great content and you should have way more subscribers!
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This is an awesome video, the graphics are amazing You're locked on to a future of great success and I'm proud of you for that. It's really really good and I loved it! I'm 100% sure your channel will do great, and you'll deserve everything that'll come with that.
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Great video! I already knew about strange matter but you get a sub anyway because this is one of the most information dense videos I've seen on it. Thank you!
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I’ve been learning about quarks and this video did a great job of going through a lot of important points, well done sir
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Only 4 minutes in and I’ve already found this extremely helpful to sorting out details of stuff that I (thought) I kind of knew and putting them together. Simple language, simple pictures, weird matter. Thank you!
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This reminds me when I was in elementary school a lady science person came in to our class. One thing she did was put a powder in water and it turned all the water in the cup into a jelly/solid. Scared me half to death thinking about how someone could sprinkle some into the ocean and the whole thing would turn to jello! I thought we were gonna cause and extinction event!
