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Article: Strangelets In The Night... Dark matter revelation, big bang confirmation and speed-of-light confusion.(Top Science Stories 2002/Cosmology)
- Article from:
- Popular Science
- Article date:
- January 1, 2003
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2003 Bonnier Corporation. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Byline: Michael Moyer
When the Chandra X-ray Observatory turned its eye to what astronomers thought was a neutron star--an exotic object so dense a single teaspoon of it would weigh 100 trillion tons--they were shocked to find that it seemed even denser than expected. Astronomers hypothesize the star could be made of "strangelets," a new form of matter that until now has only been imagined by theorists. The strangelets could be elements of dark matter, invisible matter that makes up a large part of the universe.
Meanwhile, in August a team of astro-nomers at Australia's University of New South Wales announced that by observing distant quasars, they ...