Abstract
We report results from a search for strangelets (small chunks of strange quark matter) in lunar soil using the Yale WNSL accelerator as a mass spectrometer. We have searched over a range in mass from to for nuclear charges 5, 6, 8, 9, and 11. No strangelets were found in the experiment. For strangelets with nuclear charge 8, a concentration in lunar soil higher than is excluded at the 95% confidence level. The implied limit on the strangelet flux in cosmic rays is the most sensitive to date for the covered range and is relevant to both recent theoretical flux predictions and a strangelet candidate event found by the AMS-01 experiment.
- Received 27 March 2009
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.103.092302
©2009 American Physical Society
Synopsis
Strangelets in the night
Published 31 August 2009
The Moon might be stranger than we think.
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