Related papers: Can cosmic strangelets reach the earth?
Motivated by the theoretical hypotheses on the existence of heretofore unobserved stable elementary particles and exotic nuclear states, we searched for doubly-charged particles, as anomalously heavy isotopes of helium, in the Earth's…
Light scalar fields can drive the accelerated expansion of the universe. Hence, they are obvious dark energy candidates. To make such models compatible with tests of General Relativity in the solar system and "fifth force" searches on…
We construct strangelets, taking into account electrostatic effects, including Debye screening, and arbitrary surface tension sigma of the interface between vacuum and quark matter. We find that there is a critical surface tension…
We examine the properties of both forms of strange matter, small lumps of strange quark matter (strangelets) and of strange hadronic matter (Metastable Exotic Multihypernuclear Objects: MEMOs) and their relevance for present and future…
It is likely that ultra-high energy cosmic rays contain a significant component of heavy or intermediate mass nuclei. The propagation of ultra-high energy nuclei through cosmic radiation backgrounds is more complicated than that of protons…
In this paper we consider the possibility that strange quark matter may be manifested in the form of strangelet crystal planets. These planet-like objects are made up of nuggets of strange quark matter (SQM), organized in a crystalline…
The majority of astronomers and physicists accept the reality of dark energy but also believe it can only be studied indirectly through observation of the motions of galaxies. This paper opens the experimental question of whether it is…
Recently, properties of exoplanet atmospheres have been constrained via multi-wavelength transit observation, which measures an apparent decrease in stellar brightness during planetary transit in front of its host star (called transit…
A description of strange quark matter at finite temperature is given, with emphasis on the inclusion of finite size effects. For massless quarks all thermodynamic quantities can be evaluated analytically, while the case of massive quarks…
High-energy cosmic-ray electrons reveal some remarkable spectral features, the most noteworthy of which is the rise in the positron fraction above 10~GeV. Due to strong energy loss during propagation, these particles can reach Earth only…
We investigate the existence of bound states of baryons in a kaon condensate using chiral mean field theory. The interactions are described by an effective SU(3)_L X SU(3)_R chiral lagrangian where terms of higher order in density, baryon…
Space debris larger than 1 cm can damage space instruments and impact Earth. The low-Earth orbits (at heights smaller than 2000 km) and orbits near the geostationary- Earth orbit (at 35786 km height) are especially endangered, because most…
Dark sector particles at the GeV scale carrying baryon number provide an attractive framework for understanding the origin of dark matter and the matter-antimatter asymmetry of the universe. We demonstrate that dark decays of hadronic…
Terrestrial planetary systems may exist around nearby stars as the Earth-sized counterparts to the many giant planets already discovered within the solar neighborhood. In this chapter we first discuss the numerous techniques which have been…
Strong nuggets with a baryon number of $A\sim 10^{10-30}$ could be able to survive from the cosmic separation of the QCD phases, provided the transition from strange quark matter to strangeon matter is accounted for, thereby evading…
The nature of cosmological dark matter finds its explanation in physics beyond the Standard model of elementary particles. The landscape of dark matter candidates contains a wide variety of species, either elusive or hardly detectable in…
Direct detection of dark matter continues to elude scientists' many attempts to see it interact, and still to this day the only way we know it is there is through observed gravitational effects. The many search experiments are at the point…
Possible mechanisms of baryogenesis are reviewed. Special attention is payed to those which allow for creation of astronomically significant domains or objects consisting of antimatter. Observational manifestations of cosmological…
Lorentz symmetry has been tested at low energy with great accuracy, but its extrapolation to very high-energy phenomena is much less well established. We expect a possible breaking of Lorentz symmetry to be a very high energy and very short…
Candidate astrophysical acceleration sites capable of producing the highest energy cosmic rays (E > 10^{19.5} eV) appear to be at far greater distances than is compatible with their being known particles. The properties of a new particle…