Same Old Things: Quarks, Preons And Strange Matter

It’s been raining in Taipei for the last two weeks.

I’ve been told that the rain will hopefully stop by the Dragon Boat festival, on June 19th, but it’s the weather.

It’s been pouring down with a vengeance last week and it’s been another rainy weekend.

It was my wife’s birthday last week and I got her some jewelry from Frank Gehry’s collection from Tiffany’s. She was happy.

My dog is getting closer and closer. I have to make sure that I reserve a space for him in the quarantine pound next week.

I’ve been busy getting on with my life.

I’ve taken some great photos of the Taipei Public Library, Beitou Branch for Discover Taipei. When Zooomr is up and running, I’ll post them.

I’ve started watching Star Trek: Enterprise. Some of the Star Trek: The Next Generation is really dated and it’s hard to get into it. I’m still awaiting DS9, that will be fun. I can hear the rain starting again harder outside.

I’ve started work on a new story in the Galactic*Rim universe. At the same time, I am continuing my original story. The new story is called The Transwarp Hub and uses some of my research on transwarp hubs and megastructures.

I’ve come up on some great science in particle physics and astrophysics. I am most interested in what we call a quark/strange star. From my reseach, some massive neutron stars can become quark stars. In neutron stars, we find neutron degenerate matter. In quark stars, we find quark matter. Most interesting is the concept of a quark nova. This also leads to preon stars and preon matter. Preons are the theoretical subcomponents of quarks.

Atoms are made up out of quarks. Quarks are made out of preons. A preon star 5m in diameter would have the same mass as Earth. I could research this for a few months to really get a handle on it.

I’ve also been looking into quantum chromodynamics and quarks.