What is a strange quark

"Strange quarks normally aren't stable and quickly decay into up quarks and W-bosons. In their short lifetime, they are part of some baryons and mesons, like the kaon. Particles with a strange quark have a strangeness value of -1. Those form the strange matter. From a mass of 1000 u upwards there could be stable strange matter. This could be formed in heavy neutron stars."

From what I understand, strange quarks are heavy and rapidly decay into lighter more stable quarks found in atomic nuclei. I suspect that quarks like 'strange quark' are only found in particle accelerator experiments, never in nature.

See: Particle Zoo
The Standard Model
http://images-of-elements.com/particle-z…

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Best regards

A strange quark is an elementary particle with the following properties:
Spin: 1/2 (like all quarks)
Baryon number: 1/3 (like all quarks)
electric charge: -1/3 (like the down and bottom quarks)
isospin: 0 (like the charm, top, and bottom quarks)

The next four quantum numbers just mean that the strange quark is different from the other types of quarks: charm: 0, strangness: -1, topness: 0, bottomness: 0

A strange quark is one of the six quarks in the standard model. There are the up, down, bottom, top, strange, and charmed quarks. The up and down quarks are the most commonly occurring in nature and are the lightest of the quarks. Generally in particle physics, lighter particles are more prevalent because larger particles decay into them.

A strange quark is one of the six quarks in the standard model. There are the up, down, bottom, top, strange, and charmed quarks. The up and down quarks are the most commonly occurring in nature and are the lightest of the quarks. Generally in particle physics, lighter particles are more prevalent because larger particles decay into them.


EDIT: @ Serial Killer

Why did you copy my answer?

Quarks are what create the other nuclear particles - they basically have 1/3s of the charges involved and are arranged in 3's ....

Their name came from a passage of text...in Finnegan's Wake...

I believe it is the antiparticle to the Normal Quark.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strange_qua…