Thursday, January 15, 2026

Quantum nuggets: A big bang in cosmology?

 


Could this actually prove the Big Bang? A new theory proposes that the mysterious dark matter needed for Big Bang cosmology to make sense, could simply be normal matter. No need to postulate strange new particles with weird properties. Or to be more precise: the theory is 40 years old, but used to come up against our current theories about the young universe. 

The technical details are beyond me, but the bottom line is that a certain form of quarks known as "strangelets" may form stable "quark nuggets". These are incredibly heavy and could account for all the missing matter in the universe. As far as I understand, there is yet no empirical evidence for any of this. It remains a purely mathematical theory. But I suppose it *is* interesting that the math works out for a change.

So the next step is to find one of the nuggets...without it destroying our entire planet! A worthy goal, no doubt. 

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