Talk:Ice-9 type transition

Another version of this article was speedy-deleted once before on December 2 2004 for being "nonsense", and while this version doesn't make quite so many dubious and non-encyclopedic statements I still wonder whether this term is actually used anywhere. Jaxal, I don't suppose you could dig up an example or two of it being used, to show it's not a neologism? Otherwise, perhaps it would be better to just redirect this to Cat's Cradle. Bryan 23:06, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)

http://www.exitmundi.nl/strange.htm has a use. A dive into google show some old news articles from when the stranglet issue was first raised dating back to 1999, so it's certainly not a new phrase. The way in which those articles quote it implies that the term is(was) in use by the scientific community. Jaxal1 03:24, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Bingo! I think I have found an original attribution. This may have been coined by Frank Wilczek in reply to the run-away strangelet scenario. link is a slightly messy archived email, but a section attributed to Wilczek contained the oldest reference I can find. Jaxal1 03:54, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Ah, good. I'll incorporate these references into the article tomorrow, hopefully if I remember. :) Bryan 06:08, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Not science

As the physicist on the site linked above writes (bolding mine):

In the case of the Brookhaven RHIC, dangerous surprises seem extremely unlikely. First, nuclear collisions with larger energies take place regularly as cosmic rays rain down on our atmosphere so if a disaster were possible, it would have already occurred. Second, related regimes have been explored in detail, and so we have substantial evidence that our theoretical framework for understanding what will happen is reliable. Although we cannot calculate the consequences in complete detail, we can distinguish credible from incredible scenarios.

The idea that mini black holes will be formed, as Wagner suggests, definitely falls in the latter category. The energy densities and volumes that will be produced at RHIC are nowhere near large enough to produce strong gravitational fields. On the other hand, there is a speculative but quite respectable possibility that subatomic chunks of a new stable form of matter called strangelets might be produced (this would be an extraordinary discovery). One might be concerned about an "ice-9"-type transition, wherein a strangelet grows by incorporating and transforming the ordinary matter in its surroundings. But strangelets, if they exist at all, are not aggressive, and they will start out very, very small. So here again a doomsday scenario is not plausible.

It is not something that might happen according to physical laws. It's science-fiction - not science. Gerrit ^CUTEDH 11:44, 28 September 2005 (UTC)