strange matter

1. A hypothetical, extremely dense form of matter composed entirely of strange quarks. These quarks are not grouped into separate particles (like the quarks bundled into protons and neutrons in atomic nuclei) but form a single undifferentiated mass. The material of which hypothetical quark stars are composed is thought to be strange matter; some evidence for strange matter has also been found in collisions in particle accelerators and in seismic events possibly triggered by the passing of strange matter through the Earth.

Example Sentences

A new physics result two decades in the making has found a surprisingly complex path for the production of strange matter within atoms.

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“Strange” here refers, in part, to a profound remoteness from our everyday lives: strange matter only seems to show up in truly extreme circumstances such as high-energy particle collisions and perhaps the enormously dense and pressurized cores of neutron stars.

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Probing the details of strange matter’s emergence is part of a broader effort by nuclear physicists to understand the fundamentals of how subatomic particles form.

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In this particular case, a group of researchers focused on one variety of strange matter, called lambda particles.

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Strange matter is any matter containing the subatomic particles known as strange quarks.

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