Could preon stars reveal a hidden reality?

Could preon stars reveal a hidden reality?

space.newscientist.com

Preons are hypothetical particles that have been proposed as the building blocks of quarks, which are in turn the building blocks of protons and neutrons. A preon star - which is not really a star at all - would be a chunk of matter made of these constituents of quarks and bound together by gravity. According to physicists Johan Hansson and Fredrik Sandin of the Luleå University of Technology in Sweden, swarms of preon stars may have formed in the early universe, and might even still be around.
If preon stars do exist, they would be the first evidence of a class of particles more elementary than quarks, and our current understanding of matter would be overturned. Preon stars might even account for much of the universe's dark matter, the invisible stuff that keeps clusters of galaxies from flying apart and that may be responsible for sculpting the structure of the cosmos.

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The basis of this article in the preon particle which has been proposed to exist and if proven would help explain some theoretical delemas. Like dark matter for instance and bridging the gap to string theory. The preon is theorized to be the particles that make up quarks. They are thought to be left over from the big bang in star sized masses but very small lin size so that all we might be able to detect is the gravity.
And therein lies the problem. How to detect the gravity of these masses? What about gravity lensing of light or better yet the shorter gamma rays from stellar explosions?
Or better yet use gravity wave detectors? We have the less sensitive LIGO in the AS. Also one in the UK uses the resonate porperties of microwaves to detect gravity. And in 10 years or so the European Gravitational Wave Observatory will be up and running.

PS: I have a subscription to New Scientist which is necessary to bring up the entire article.

space.newscientist.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

Interesting to say the least. However, I thought preons were past the "theoretical" designation for some time. It was just a few days ago, on the History Channels "The Universe" series, that it was claimed that preons had actually been captured at several locations around the globe, following the detection of a super-bright gamma ray burst.

reply to post by Unit541

Hi Unit,

This is what was in the article, I'll go search for additional. If you have something, post it pls.

At the root of all this is the standard model of particle physics, part of which is the notion that protons and neutrons are made of quarks. In 1974, Nobel laureate Abdus Salam and Dirac medallist Jogesh Pati proposed that certain inconsistencies in the model could be explained if quarks themselves consist of even smaller particles, which they named preons.

In the 1980s and 90s, however, preons fell out of favour because of the lack of both experimental evidence and theoretical necessity. "We do not really need preons to explain the properties of quarks," says physicist Greg Landsberg of Brown University in Rhode Island. "Searches for quark substructure are performed every time a new energy frontier opens up, and they have been all unsuccessful so far."
Edit to add: That later in the article they talk about using the Large Hadron Collider to finally break apart a quark and possibly find a preon or something else.

Preons show their handOne of these relies on the Large Hadron Collider. Like most physicists, Hansson and Sandin will be keeping a close eye on what happens when the LHC is switched on later this year at CERN near Geneva, Switzerland. Reaching energies seven times as high as any previous particle accelerator, the LHC just might have enough oomph to bust quarks apart into their building blocks, if they exist. These would show up as a shower of anomalous particles and radiation, though because they would probably recombine into quarks and larger particles within a tiny fraction of a second, they would be tough to spot.


[edit on 15/2/08 by plumranch]

Fantastic find!!! I'm always amazed by what scientists discover in the universe that surrounds us. It's quite startling what all might be out there, and in here, right under and inside of our noses. I may have preons inside of me, and that concept is just mind-boggling for some reason.

Again, great find!!

TheBorg

Hi Plum, I'm unable to find any supporting evidence for my statement on the net.
However, the episode I caught the other night is going to air again both tomorrow night (Sunday feb. 17), as well as Monday the 18th.
www.history.com...
(Supernova was the episode).
I'll watch again and get some additional info on the surrounding events. Should be able to find some papers afterwards. If not, I've got some questions for the folks at the History Channel.

reply to post by Unit541

Hi Unit,

Here's what Wiki had to say about Preons:

"The preon was a suggested substructure for both quarks and leptons, but modern collider experiments have all but disproven their existence."

So at least in the "Standard Model" there is a lot of doubt about their existance.