http://www.physorg.com/news10646.html

Since quarks are what makes atomic particles is it possible that any quark stars originated at the beginning of the universe and have long since burned out?

Hello. I was just surfing by, looking for dark-stars and stumbled across the news concerning quark stars. I have been working with these subjects during my masters thesis, and is therefore supposed to know about this.

And I do! Quark stars did indeed form during the quark-hadron phase of the very early Universe, under certain but simple assumptions. It was investigated by Edward Witten in a famous article from 1984, called 'Cosmic separation of Phases' and it was actually one of the works to spark investigation into the nature of quark stars or so called strange stars to be more specific. Their abundance, origins and properties.


To sum up the theoretical results, quark stars formed in all sizes (up to a maximum of 10^49 hadrons), but the smaller stars or nuggets evaporated before nucleosynthesis began. All in all, quark stars of size 10^33 to 10^42 hadrons were created, if Wittens simple assumptions were present.

Concerning the 'burning out' of these primordial stars or objects, they would really exist to this very day. That is unless they have experienced unusual events imposed from the outside. Such as collisions with other stars, accretion of matter, transforming them or other unthought of events.


Lasse Nordal Enevoldsen
Master of Science
Denmark

Reference:
Witten, Edward, Phys. Rev. D D30 (1984) 272