Possible consequences of strange quark matter on hydrogen burning in the sun

The possibility that strange quark matter may have properties that would allow lumps of such matter, strangelets, to participate in nucleosynthesis and contribute meaningfully to stellar energy generation, even at extremely low abundances, is considered. In order to construct a reaction network for strangelets, the Fermi-gas mass formula for strangelets (Berger and Jaffe, 1987) is extended to include shell corrections. The similarity of strangelets to hypothetical Q-nuclei (Boyd et al., 1983, 1985) suggests that the solar-neutrino problem, as well as other problems inherent to the standard solar model, might be solved if a tiny amount of certain stable strangelets existed in the sun. 31 references