Detection of quark-nugget candidate for dark matter

Quark nuggets are also called strangelets, and nuclearites and are theoretical objects composed of approximately equal numbers of up, down, and strange quarks.  They have been proposed as a candidate for dark matter, which constitutes ~85% of the universe’s mass. Its nature has been a mystery for decades. Previous efforts to detect quark nuggets assumed that the nuclear-density core interacts directly with the surrounding matter so the stopping power is minimal. In contrast, we find that the large magnetic field of quark nuggets will produce a magnetopause with surrounding plasma, as the earth’s magnetic field produces a magnetopause with the solar wind, and substantially increases the stopping power. We use the magnetopause model to compute the energy deposition on air, water, and earth as a function of quark-nugget mass, discuss the consequences for previous work, and show initial data that indicate instrumenting the Great Salt Lake in Utah USA can test the quark-nugget hypothesis for dark matter with mass > 0.003 kg.