STRANGE matter may not be the strangest of all. Researchers at a particle
accelerator near New York have created “doubly strange” atomic nuclei. These
contain rare “strange” quarks and are supposed to be the first step towards
strange matter鈥攖hought to exist only in superdense neutron stars. But the
next step failed to materialise.
Protons and neutrons in everyday matter are made of “up” and “down”
quarks鈥攋ust two of the six types of quark. But neutron stars, the dense
cores of dead stars, may contain a soup of strange quarks with exotic
properties. Persuade two strange quarks to get…
