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A comment on 'Alien Alloys' in The New York Times' UFO Story. Parent comment

Re:'Alien Alloys' in The New York Times' UFO Story by mindcrime on Saturday December 23, 2017 @06:12AM (#15993780)
However, we all know that quarks and more exist, so you don't think it's possible that an advanced race could make a material that skips that atom part?

This sounds like pure sci-fi to me. AFAIK, everything we know about physics suggests that there are no stable substances made up of sub-atomic particles in a way that "skips the atom part". If that were possible, it would be in the realm of "entirely new physics".

Not to say that it's not possible of course... you don't know what you don't know and all that. But the Standard Model seems to be pretty firmly grounded and I haven't seen anything to suggest that it allows for such a thing. Personally, my bayesian prior on this being possible would be awfully close to 0 right now.

Then again, maybe it's Dwarf Star Alloy.[1]

[1]: tardis.wikia.com/wiki/Dwarf_star_alloy

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Re:'Alien Alloys' in The New York Times' UFO Story by stordoff on Saturday December 23, 2017 @08:36AM (#15994089)
Close to but definitely non-zero IMO. The quark model has been around for less than 100 years; push that out to, say, 1000 year time-scale, and I could certainly see it developing entirely new physics compared to what we now know. The Standard Model is well-founded, but explaining the things it currently doesn't (gravity/dark energy/neutrino masses etc.) could well require it.
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