Strangelets

Scientists have come to the conclusion that two mysterious explosions in the 1990s were caused by bizarre cosmic missiles.

Strangelets – sometimes also called strange-quark nuggets – are predicted to have many unusual properties, including a density about ten million million times greater than lead. Just a single pollen-size fragment is believed to weigh several tons.

Seismometers in Turkey and Bolivia recorded a violent event in Antarctica that packed the punch of several thousand tons of TNT. The disturbance then ripped through Earth on a route that ended with it exiting through the floor of the Indian Ocean off Sri Lanka just 26 seconds later – implying a speed of 900,000 mph.

The second event took place on November 24, when sensors in Australia and Bolivia picked up an explosion starting in the Pacific south of the Pitcairn Islands and travelling through Earth to appear in Antarctica 19 seconds later.

If you get hit with one of these, you are definitely not charmed.

~ a density about ten million million times greater than lead.

I always hate it when I see something like “ten million million”.

Why not just say ten trillion, instead of ten million million? They both mean 10,000,000,000,000.

The answer is that in the United States and in the scientific community it’s called ten trillion, and in other countries, it’s called ten billion.

If you call it ten million million, as cumbersome as that is, it means the same thing to everyone.