2 ms·
Not true: the surface area of the nuggets could be so small they'd fall below detection threshold.
by pfdietz 2y ago
Not true: the surface area of the nuggets could be so small they'd fall below detection threshold.
- lazide 2y agoAny interaction with normal matter (including solar wind or the interstellar medium) would result in extremely energetic annihilation events. these aren’t subtle.
- pfdietz 2y agoAnd if the nuggets have sufficiently small surface area then the rate of these events would be low enough to be obscured by the background from other processes. It would not be like the annihilation from antihydrogen atoms hitting hydrogen atoms. The density of nuclear matter is some 15 orders of magnitude higher than ordinary matter, so nuggets 1 angstrom in diameter could have 10^15 times the mass for a given upper bound on the interaction rate with ambient gas.
- lazide 2y agoThere is no way anyone would miss the radiation emitted though. It would be, at a minimum, a very perceptible ‘glow’ over the volumes of space we’re talking about.
- pfdietz 2y agoIt's not ruled out by evidence, AFAIK, and could explain some observational puzzles. https://indico.fnal.gov/event/6199/contributions/94686/attachments/61845/74173/CF6.pdf https://indico.fnal.gov/event/6199/contributions/94686/attac... (that was 2013; perhaps observations since have made it less likely) 2021 paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/2105.08719 https://arxiv.org/abs/2105.08719 2020 paper: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/342573954_Antimatter_as_macroscopic_dark_matter https://www.researchgate.net/publication/342573954_Antimatte... ("a large region of the parameter space remains unconstrained, most notably for nuclear-dense objects.")