Have we discovered every type of matter there is in the universe? No, I am sure we haven't. We have to remember that we occupy only a very small area at the tip of a spiral arm in our galaxy. Even our galaxy is made up of different types of stars and there may even be types of stars that we know nothing about. Scientists are still discovering new types of materials so why wouldn't it be possible to find new types of matter? For one thing, when we look for different chemicals and matter in distant stars, our instruments are usually set to look for what we already know about. It is only a scifi story, but a good example of this is when the Enterprise looks for life forms with their instruments and they don't show any, but they are there. These instruments were tuned to detect known types of life forms only. How could we set our instruments to detect something that we know nothing about?

Scientists may have discovered, what they believe, to be a new type of star composed of matter that is hither to unknown. The matter puts the stars somewhere between a neutron star and a black hole. Previously a neutron star was the densest thing known, except for black holes. So what are we talking about here? We are talking about something that is so heavy that it almost defies comprehension. Since a neutron star is so dense that a spoonful of its matter would weigh as much as all vehicles on Earth, this new type of star would have to be composed of material far heavier. It might be so dense that a chunk the size of a 35 X 100 feet would weigh as much as the entire Earth. The existence of this type of object is not yet certain.

Scientists in many different places are very curious about the existence of these types of stars and have even named the type, they are known as Quark stars. So why did they decide to call them Quark stars? Scientists consider quarks to be the basic building blocks of matter and they felt it appropriate to name them this because they are only one step up from a black hole and supposedly formed of quarks. The stars also have another name and that is Strange star. This is not what it seems. Strange is a type of matter. Strange matter is composed of strange quarks, along with up and down quarks, all of which are bound together. Some believe that strange matter is really dark matter, the matter that many believe makes up about 90% of the universe. It is now supposed that some of the stars, which we thought were neutron stars, may be Quark stars because it is believed that both will look very similar.

Here is the strange part of all of this, it is believed by some scientists that there may be many Quark stars in our galaxy, so many that at least two explode every day. We might not have even suspected the existence of Quark stars if it weren't for the existence of the Chandra X-Ray Observatory which detected two stars that fit this bill in 2002. The data that was returned by the observatory suggested that the stars were denser than neutron stars, but not all scientists agree, some have attacked the data. A link is provided to an astrophysics abstract on the subject of the newly found stars HERE. Scientists have actually suspected the existence of these types of stars for over 20 years. The reason that the two stars are believed to be Quark stars is that one of them is far smaller than a neutron star One star that was examined was 1.2 million degrees F. and yet is was only 7 miles in diameter.

Here is the exciting part for scientists, one of the stars was only created in 1181 A.D. Records dating back to that date show the explosion that created the Quark star, if that is what it is. Talk about new born stars, wow. In the field of space, this is a new born baby. So far we have not been able to produce this type of matter ourselves. When scientists want to examine exotic particles on Earth they use a particle accelerator to smash bigger particles into smaller ones. The gravity of something like the star we are talking about is so great that it crushes particles thus providing even finer results. Neutrons would be crushed as would even their membranes, this would cause the quarks to bond together and create a Quark or Strange star.

Since we are still finding different types of matter out there, can you imagine the new materials that we will discover over the next couple of hundred years? As we learn more about the very fabric of our universe, it has to benefit us in materials research. If history is any indication of what is to come, one has just to look at the last hundred years. The materials we have discovered since 1900 are incredible and these are only the ones we know about, what about those materials that have been classified secret? Oh you don't think there were any? Think again, the government has the right to classify any invention top secret and keep it for government use.

Will we find other stars, or perhaps even planets out there, that are composed of matter that is completely unknown to us? Perhaps we will find an area of this galaxy or even another entire galaxy that is composed of this stuff, only time will tell.