The Most Dangerous Stuff in the Universe - Strange Stars Explained
Why Worldbuilding Stack Exchange recommends it
Worldbuilding Stack Exchange answerers point people to it as a clear, citable description of strangelets and runaway matter conversion when designing catastrophic or exotic-matter scenarios.
Recommended by 1 people across 3 different months, 2020 to 2022.
What it is
A Kurzgesagt animated explainer on strange matter, a hypothetical form of quark matter that could exist inside neutron stars. It covers what strangelets are, why contact with ordinary matter might convert it into strange matter, and what this says about the early universe.
Cited in 1 Wikipedia article, including Strangelet.
What people said
Recommends The Square-Cube Law · 2020-01 · Worldbuilding Stack Exchange · on “Could a mass made up of certain elements or compounds "disrupt" a star?”
Strange matter One single strangelet [LINK] will do. It could weight as little as a light nucleus (such as that of an carbon or oxygen atom). The thing about strangelets is that everything they interact with also becomes strangelets. This means the sun would be completely converted into strangelets in finite time. For more information, see this video by Kurzgesagt, starting at 3:52 [this video] (or watch the whole thing to learn even more about this bizarre thing). The sun would still have the same mass, but it would become denser and dimmer.
Recommends The Square-Cube Law · 2020-07 · Worldbuilding Stack Exchange · on “What kind of hazardous alien waste would tear apart society trying to obtain it?”
Please see my answers to: What would be the most expensive material to an intergalactic society? [LINK] And: Could there exist a quantum virus which breaks someone's body down to fundamental particles? [LINK] In my answers I mention strangelets, a form of matter that works like katamaris [LINK] . The TL;DR explanation of strangelets is this: (...) a strangelet coming into contact with a lump of ordinary matter could convert the ordinary matter to strange matter. This "ice-nine"-like disaster scenario is as follows: one strangelet hits a nucleus, catalyzing its immediate conversion to strange matter. This liberates energy, producing a larger, more stable strangelet, which in turn hits another
Recommends The Square-Cube Law · 2021-04 · Worldbuilding Stack Exchange · on “Seeking good physical candidates for total collapse of the universe we live in”
You don't need to change anything in physics to have a runaway death of the universe scenario. You just need a strangelet [LINK] to come into existence. A strangelet is a hypothetical particle consisting of a bound state of roughly equal numbers of up, down, and strange quarks. An equivalent description is that a strangelet is a small fragment of strange matter, small enough to be considered a particle. The size of an object composed of strange matter could, theoretically, range from a few femtometers across (with the mass of a light nucleus) to arbitrarily large. Once the size becomes macroscopic (on the order of metres across), such an object is usually called a strange star. The term "str
Cites Nierninwa · 2020-03 · Worldbuilding Stack Exchange · on “How fast would strange matter conversion go?”
Background: So this Kurzgesagt video [this video] talks about quark stars, and how two of them colliding could send strangelets [LINK] flying towards Earth or the Sun. Now it's been said that since, theoretically (as none has been actually observed), this is a more stable state of matter, this could start a "contamination" of sorts that turns any celestial body into a ball of strange matter (essentially, a new quark star). There are articles [LINK] discussing these possibilities (along with other things such as the true vacuum theory) and there have been books with the plot being that a particle accelerator created strange matter that escapes (which, from my understanding, is highly unlikely). Sc
Cites Nierninwa · 2020-03 · Worldbuilding Stack Exchange · on “What is the science behind a wave that changes the laws of physics?”
So I remember reading a long time ago about how a theoretical "wave" could exist, as the laws of physics suddenly changed in one place and then this rippled across the universe, basically at the speed of light (keeping in mind that this would most likely destroy everything) and we'd pretty much have no way of knowing. I wanted to make a story based on this and after extensive research I haven't been able to find any good evidence for that so I'm not sure if I just didn't remember it correctly, or if I dreamt it, but if there's a way to make it physically possible, then that'd be awesome. I guess my main inspiration kind of is the music video for 2nd Law: Isolated System [LINK] which, I know,
Cites DWKraus · 2022-03 · Worldbuilding Stack Exchange · on “Could a molecular cloud turn the Sun into a killer star?”
Strange Matter: Strange matter [this video] is a hypothetical state of quark matter only formed in neutron stars that converts all other matter into strange matter. This may result in the release of a lot of energy (read radiation) and the conversion of everything into strange matter. A cloud of strangelets (strange matter particles) colliding with the sun would be pretty terrible. Since they are purely hypothetical, the speed and pattern of the sun being converted to strange matter would be open to interpretation.