IAA Space Exploration Conference

Planetary Robotic and Human Spaceflight Exploration

09 January 2014 A pre-Summit Conference of the HEADS OF SPACE AGENCIES SUMMIT ON EXPLORATION 2) Scientific Goals in Robotics Missions

Quark Matter in the Solar System : Evidence for a Game-Changing Space Resource
T.M. Eubanks Asteroid Initiatives, LLC

Keywords : Quark Matter, Asteroids, Economic Development, Space Exploration Macroscopic nuggets of quark matter are an alternative explanation for dark matter which are consistent with the observational constraints on this component of our universe. Although dark matter comprises most of the mass of the galaxy, most of this material is free-floating in the galactic halo. A relatively small fraction of the nearby dark matter would, however, be captured during the formation of the Solar System, forming planetesimal nucleation centers, yielding a present-day population of quark matter cores inside of Solar System bodies. While most of these cores would currently be deep inside the Sun, planets, and other major bodies in the Solar System, some would be inside of small asteroids. Very small asteroids (! 200 meters radius) with quark matter cores would indeed be strange asteroids, with a preponderance of strange quark matter, high bulk densities, and strong gravitational binding. The quark matter nugget hypothesis is supported by the observed population of small Very Fast Rotating (VFR) Near Earth Objects, with rotational periods between 25 seconds and ~ 1/2 hour. These VFR asteroids are consistent with the existence of a set of quark matter nugget cores with masses between 10 and 100 megatons, within the nugget mass range predicted from the Condensed Compact Object theory of Zhitnitsky. While rotational data cannot prove the existence of quark matter nuggets, this agreement between theory and observations suggests that further observations are needed to test this hypothesis, up to and including direct spacecraft exploration of candidate strange asteroids. If some of the VFR asteroids are indeed strange asteroids their quark matter cores could be extracted using some of the techniques being developed for asteroid mining. The economic benefits of exploitable strange quark matter in the Solar System would be little short of astounding, as they could be converted into antimatter factories, potentially converting a substantial fraction of their mass energy into antimatter using a process analogous to Andreev

reflection in Helium superconductors. Even if the probability of strange asteroids in the Solar System appears unlikely, the prospect of realizing more than the entire net terrestrial energy reserve from a single strange asteroid should motivate further research into this interesting possibility for the economic development of the Solar System.