Stellarator, very cool episode.  Fortunately, while it makes for a great cosmic horror story, I think we can safely rule out a strange apocalypse by a simple observation:  most of the heavy elements on Earth above atomic number 44 were forged in the collisions of neutron stars.  That includes most gold, platinum, iodine, iridium, and bismuth:



If most of these atoms came from colliding neutron stars, and if neutron stars contain any appreciable amount of strange matter at all, and if strange matter has these claimed properties, then most stars including our own should have already been hit by strangelets and converted into strange stars.

We can also rule out strangelets as a significant component of dark matter, because most of the dark matter must be older than the first stars, and even the CMB.

It's amazing to think that all the gold and silver in the world was formed by neutron star collisions (or possibly supernova explosions?)

A-L-E-X wrote:

Source of the post r possibly supernova explosions?

No. Supernova generated elements are the green elements in the table. The energy of a supernova is not enough to create elements like gold and higher!

Watsisname wrote:

Source of the post Fortunately, while it makes for a great cosmic horror story, I think we can safely rule out a strange apocalypse by a simple observation...

These were my thoughts as well - but that does not rule out the fact that this stuff is criminally underused by genocidal aliens for galactic warcrimes !

And another excellent explanation by PBS Space Time

I don't know if this has been posted yet, but I thought it was very cool:





Also, some here are some newer images from the Mars Curiosity Rover (spoiler: they are mostly rocks and added wind effects).





And this recent measurement of a solar eclipse on Mars is also neat: https://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/curiosity-captured-two-solar-eclipses-on-mars