Strangelets in terrestrial atmosphere

Abstract

A new dynamical model for the propagation of strangelets through the terrestrial atmosphere is proposed. Strangelets are small lumps of strange quark matter (SQM) which consist of roughly equal numbers of up, down and strange quarks. Since the suggestion of Witten[1]in 1984 that these strangelets, and not ordinary nuclear matter, represent the true ground state of QCD, this area of research has expanded considerably. The existence of stable or metastable lumps of SQM would have numerous implications for physics and astrophysics. Most importantly, they can account for the cosmological dark matter problem to a large extent, if not entirely [2]. Moreover, the mere existence of strangelets may be one of the most perfect evidences for the QGP phase transition that is believed to have occurred in the early universe or inside neutron stars.