SEMINAR IN THREE ACTS

Vigdor Teplitz

1. Quark Nugget. About 20 years ago, Witten pointed out that matter made of up, down and strange quarks would have less kinetic energy than matter made of just up and down, but the same potential energy, and therefore might be stable at zero pressure (unlike matter made of up and down which condenses into protons and neutrons and separate nuclei). Strange quark matter (SQM) could then exist in macroscopic amounts with nuclear density and be a dark matter candidate. We have looked for evidence of multi-ton strange quark nuggets (SQNs) passing through the Earth leaving behind seismic waves in about a million seismic reports to the U.S. Geological Society over the years 1990-1994. We have found one set of 9 reports with first signal arrival times and waveform characteristics predicted for passage of a nugget through the Earth (about the frequency one might expect from a dark matter candidate). 2. Quinton Radiation. Assuming the accelerating expansion of the universe is due to a quintessence field, radiation of its quanta, which I like to call "quintons," was studied. We assumed no extra interactions beyond that required by general covariance through the covariant derivative (of a zeroth order quintessence field). We looked at both the case in which the zero order field varies only over cosmological times and distances and the case in which it is modified in the presence of nearby masses. We looked at energy loss by various binary systems, ranging from clusters of galaxies over long times to proton-proton collisions over short times. 3. Beyond Einstein. I'll briefly review the status of the program.