Quark Matter Blamed for Paired 1993 Seismic Events 403
Ethanon writes "In an article posted by BBC, scientists have suggested that two "unassociated" seismic events that occurred in 1993 were actually strange Quark matter passing through the Earth at a speed of perhaps 250 miles per second. A spec of strange Quark matter the size of a human cell is said to be so dense that it could weigh a tonne! Check it out
"
Is that a particle in your pocket (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Is that a particle in your pocket (Score:3, Informative)
nuggets. Physicists can't yet do the calculations
to work out the average charge per baryon on
strange quark matter. If has a negative charge it
would suck in a nucleii and grow, while if it is
positively charge it will reply ordinary nucleii
and only be able to grow from neutron and in
neutron stars.
My guess would be Strange quark nuggets would
be positive, why: a equal miss of u,d and s
quarks is neutral, but the s (charge -1/3), is
more massive than the other two, so you would
have a prepondance of u and d quarks (Charges +2/3 and -1/3), so it the charge would be something positive.
Ferengi passing through the earth? (Score:2, Funny)
Old News... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Old News... (Score:2, Funny)
Does this mean that all comments here get modded -1:Redundant?
Re:Old News... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Old News... (Score:3, Funny)
You cut-and-pasted that comment from a previous comment on a repeated story! And the next time this happens, I'm going to post this comment again.
Re:Old News... (Score:5, Funny)
Jealous he beat you to it? (Score:3, Insightful)
Sometimes we can't remember if this is a duplicate story or not. These "repeat" posts are very helpful in figuring that out.
Besides, he wasn't karma whoring. He took the time to search the last strangelet article, get the url, and link it for us. If he was truly karma whoring, there would be no link. He would have worried about taking all that time getting us a link while giving up valueable time for some other person to post their "repeat" message.
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Old actors don't die, they just go to Old Navy
...in other news... (Score:5, Funny)
More info, here on slashdot. (Score:4, Informative)
-Restil
Imagine.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Not a whole hell of a lot. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Not a whole hell of a lot. (Score:2, Interesting)
I'd imagine something weighing a ton, going that fast, would cause an order of magnitude more damage than the aforementioned
Re:Not a whole hell of a lot. (Score:2)
Consider this: if you fire a
As the quark matter is traveling at a much higher speed versus the bullet, my above analogy may be highly flawed. But I don't think too much of it's energy would be transferred--if it causes earthquakes when it passes through the Earth, it's because of the above-mentioned chain-reaction where it transfers energy to matter it collides with. It has thousands of miles to disrupt particles, if it passes through your body, it has only about a foot. or so.
IANAP/A (I am not a physicist/astronomer)
Re:Not a whole hell of a lot. (Score:2)
First: They spread out. That 3mm slug is 10-20 times that diameter after passing through skull.
Second: They rotate. In the case of an AK-47, the rotation of the bullet causes it to travel throughout your body.
Also, 3mm may not seem big, but when compared to a cell, it's huge. I don't know the actual comparison, but I'd guess that a 3mm bullet would be like a Super Dome to the average cell. (The Super Dome holds >~60,000 people, and that 3mm bullet could hold well over 60,000 cells.)
~Hammy
Re:Not a whole hell of a lot. (Score:5, Informative)
It's like saying f'(x) = df/dx is 0 because df is almost zero... you are neglecting the very important fact that dx is almost zero too.
To apply it back to this case: (a previous post mentionned it too) if that thing weighed only a gram, but was traveling at the speed of light, you'd probably vaporize from the energy it would release in you. In the same veine, if it were traveling at reasonable speeds, weighed only 1kg, but the impact point was concentrated into one square nanometer, the damage done might just as well rupture every single cell in your body.
Another example is icebergs, those giants move at something like 2-3 km/h, but the energy they would release if they hit a oil-platform is greater than the energy a 747 would if it were to crash into the platform at cruising speed.
The bottom line is you have to know how much energy the particle contains, and also, how much of it would be released in your body. The fact that it's small doesn't indicate anything whatsoever...
My uninformed guess is that if this thing can cause mini-earthquakes, it could be quite a powerful blast on the body.
Re:Not a whole hell of a lot. (Score:4, Insightful)
article quote: "a one-tonne spec would release the energy of a 50-kilotonne nuclear bomb, spread along its entire path through the Earth."
So the energy released is something like 50 kilotonnes / 10,000 km
= 5 tonnes of TNT / km
= 5 kg of TNT / m
= 0.5 kg of TNT / 10cm
So this thing traveling through your skull would be like detonating a pound of TNT inside of your head. The brain damage would definitely register.
Re:Not a whole hell of a lot. (Score:4, Interesting)
Something that we'd be able to see?
Then again, what the hell do I know?
Re:Not a whole hell of a lot. (Score:4, Funny)
At least they're right about ONE thing: it probably wouldn't hurt at all :)
Re:Not a whole hell of a lot. (Score:3, Informative)
Other high energy particles, such as gamma rays, which are substantially smaller, almost always pass through your body without any collisions resulting in zero damage, of course.
here's an explanation (Score:4, Interesting)
Not really, he is saying that while the things have a hell of a lot of momentum (3e11 Newton seconds) it's impact area would be incredible small (smaller than a hydrogen atom in diameter) so it would just blast through a person without transfering its momentum to more than the cells it went through. So when it exits the individual it has left a wake, but a small one because of its incredible velocity.
This isn't billiards, where a ball transfers all its momentum to another, and it isn't like an ice burg where the oil station must be obliterated for passage. At 3e8 m/s it would pass through a meter of flesh in 1/3e8 seconds transfering energy to a few cells with very little mass themselves.
That's why he didn't think it would significantly damage a person. The Earth was both dense enough and large(volume) enough to take the blast.
Re:Hey math wizards... (Score:2)
When you get hit by a bullet, you absorb most of the kinetic energy carried by the bullet, so it tends to rip you apart. Your body structure is too dense for a bullet to pass through without energy loss, not true for a quark. If this quark had slowed down signifigantly or stopped in the planet, then it's energy would've been transfered into the planet, resulting in a 50kt blast (i.e. Second Impact, har). But it sailed right through, so we didn't feel much.
Re:Not a whole hell of a lot. (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Imagine.. (Score:5, Insightful)
After all, if it dumped all its energy right then and there, it would create an energetic event equal to an asteriod hitting the planet.
While it does dump 50kt worth of energy on its way through Earth, think about how thick the Earth is and then calculate how much damage is done per square centimeter. Not a lot really.
So yes it has a lot of energy, but it loses it only a bit at a time as it zips through objects. It will have to zip through a lot more very large objects before it ever could be stopped (or hit with a huge enough repelling force which would require enormous amounts of energy to generate).
Re:Imagine.. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Imagine.. (Score:2)
Spontaneous human combustion? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Spontaneous human combustion? (Score:3, Interesting)
There is a problem in that we don't know what the likelihood of one of these particles hitting earth is (much less of it hitting a person). The study registers very few cases, but it can hardly be said to be very extensive or conclusive (or even correct).
Anyways, when new, previously unknown phenomena is theorized or observed, it is always a good idea to look for prior evidence or see if it can explain other things, even if they were at some time dismissed as lunatics' ravings. An excellent example of this can be found in this recently posted article [nasa.gov] about a theory that would provide a reasonable explanation to the accounts of witnesses that said they heard sounds produced by meteorites instantly (when they saw them).
--
Re:Spontaneous human combustion? (Score:5, Interesting)
In these cases, the person was always
a) alone
b) in a closed room
c) smoking or near a lit fire
d) either intoxicated to the point of unconciousness or already dead from natural causes
e) Mildly to Fully Obese
f) Room has heavy waxy soot on ceiling or high points of the wall
In fact because of the extremely high rate of intoxication among the victums it was thought at one point they died from the alcholol in the blood stream combusting.
What happened really was:
a) Person passes out
b) Cigarette or Fire catches clothing on fire
c) Due to lack of oxygen fire become a slow burn
d) fat from body melts from fire
e) clothing uses molten fat as fuel, ie a human candle
While the heat is strong at the point of the burn, it doesn't turn into a huge fire, thus the lack of damage to other features in the room.
THus, in the end, no Paranormal activties needed.
Your name would live forever (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Imagine.. (Score:3, Interesting)
All in all, you probably wouldn't even feel it, or if you did, it'd be a sort of "huh? what was that? oh well, must be getting old" sort of feeling.
As for the seismic trace: that was several kilometers of decidedly non-sploochy stuff.
On the other hand, I don't *really* have a clue (as you probably gathered), and it might just be an explanation, finally, for spontaneous human combustion.
Re:Probably not... (Score:3, Interesting)
This would go through you soo fast your body wouldn't even have a chance to react much less explode, etc. The internal combustion thing is the only possibility here for damage... just from the shere amount of friction heat generated as it passed through you.
Re:Probably not... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Imagine.. (Score:5, Informative)
Anybody remember that thing a few years ago about how MRI's don't show brain activity until after you do something? That wasn't really saying that your life is random and you're just rationalizing it, it just pointed out that your higher brain really isn't doing that much most of the time. 90% of the time you're coasting on the middle and lower brain. Conversations with coworkers are predictable and formulaic, so your big fancy brain hands it off to your brain stem and saves some glucose in case a puma tries to eat you.
For this post, the most my higher brain probably put in was the subject. Then some subroutines just stuck together memories and turned them into text. I didn't even have to consider typing it, that got handed off when I first sat down.
This means a lot for brain damage. Like in Hannibal. If somebody scoops out the right brain-bit, you could actually loose your subroutine for manners. There are actually people who've had strokes and lost certain, highly specific abilities. Like the ability to name fruit, in one textbook case. Just fruit, vegetables are fine, and just names. Show them an apple, they'll know it gets made into pies, they'll know if they like it or not, but the name they'll be clueless about. You could tell them it, and they'll remember as long as it's in their short term memory, but a few seconds later, it'll be gone, because the fruit naming call-up function got crushed by a blood clot.
From what I understand, that kind of thing will get adapted to in most cases, like your brain will start putting fruit under vegetables, and making a meta-function to deal with that irregularity.
Not like that stuff happens every time you get knocked in the head, it's just cool. My point is, a cell-sized hole through your head would have to be lined up incredibly well to kill you. You probably wouldn't even notice. And I'm not a neurosurgeon, I just play one on TV.
Larry Niven. (Score:3, Informative)
I guess that explains my frequent Flatulence (Score:4, Funny)
Re:I guess that explains my frequent Flatulence (Score:3, Funny)
sorry... i'll leave now.
I call Occam's Razor (Score:2)
What's Hollywood's response? (Score:4, Funny)
Or maybe they'll insist that it is in fact possible for Bruce Willis to walk on a quark.
Re:What's Hollywood's response? (Score:4, Funny)
dennis quaid or bruce willis...
shrink him down & send him to land on the quark...
honey, i shrank the astronaut!
Re:What's Hollywood's response? (Score:3, Funny)
remember: when you pirate movies, planets EXPLODE!
Re:What's Hollywood's response? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:What's Hollywood's response? (Score:2)
If you want to comment on bad science, how about the "10G acceleration" as they go around the moon. When you do gravity assist around a body, you're still in free-fall and experience zero G. They were firing their engines (not sure if this actally makes any sense in a flyby, it seems like it would be counterproductive), but they still couldn't experience any higher G forces than what the engines would produce in a straight line.
Speaking of basic physics, try this. The asteroid is "as big as Texas", that is the same rough measurement used to describe Ceres in my old astronomy books. The mass should therefore be about 8.7x10^20kg. Side note: the asteroid should be spherical with that much mass, not jagged and pointy. Now figure out how much energy would be required to alter its course by at least one Earth radius (6400km) before impact in 12 hours once it is closer than the moon (380,000km). Never mind that by the time they finally do it in the movie it's a lot closer than that, and that Earth's gravity is going to make it require more energy than this simple calculation. Oh, and of course some energy is lost splitting the rock in half. No nuclear weapon we have is going to do it - in fact, ALL the nuclear weapons we have won't do it.
Doesn't add up... (Score:5, Interesting)
The article says, "One event occurred on 22 October, 1993, when, according to the researchers, something entered the Earth off Antarctica and left it south of India 0.73 of a second later."
Which is it?
Re:Doesn't add up... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Doesn't add up... (Score:2)
Re:Doesn't add up... (Score:5, Informative)
You can compute the speed of compressional waves with the formula V=sqrt((k+.75mu)/rho), where mu is the rigidity and k is the bulk modulus.
Air is typically 330 m/s at sea level whereas Granite is around 5k-7k m/s.
Re:Doesn't add up... (Score:3, Informative)
You can compute the speed of compressional waves with the formula V=sqrt((k+.75mu)/rho), where mu is the rigidity and k is the bulk modulus.
Air is typically 330 m/s at sea level whereas Granite is around 5k-7k m/s.
The values you've given are the speed of sound in air and rock.
Yes, they do travel at the speed of sound. Why? Because that's the speed at which a wave travels through a medium if the wave isn't light.
You probably meant "they don't travel at the speed of sound in air"
Simon
Re:Doesn't add up... (Score:5, Interesting)
Now if it WAS
More BBC 'science'.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Generally when you go looking through enough data, expecting to find something, you do.
An alternate theory, perhaps. Some drunken teenagers kicked the seismographs?
Not that this is something that really matters to anyone, alive or dead, either way.
Re:More BBC 'science'.. (Score:2)
Except that an event had to be recorded by at least 7 different sources.
Whether or not their conclusions are right, what you're suggesting won't work.
Re:More BBC 'science'.. (Score:2, Insightful)
Sounds like bad scientific practice to me. These guys started with a conclusion, then went poring over millions of millions of pages of data to find something to support it.
I thought the scientific method worked the other way.
And noone's come up with a better explanation of where my car keys went than aliens from outer space, so that must be true too, right?
Re:More BBC 'science'.. (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm not sure where you learned the scientific method, but I recall "Come up with a hypothesis" as the number one step. A hypothesis is not a conclusion, otherwise there is no point to going through the rest of the experiment.
Re:More BBC 'science'.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Generally, when you go looking through enough data, expecting to find something, you do.
You only find it if you aren't doing your job right; when looking for events that match a certain profile, you also have to take into account the number of events that match the profile but that would be generated by different processes. Those other processes are called "background" processes. If you don't expect to see any background events, and you do see events, you have support for the foreground hypothesis. If you do expect background events, and you see exactly the number you expect to see, you don't have support for the foreground hypothesis.
This is a vast simplification of the process of teasing foreground from background, or course, not doing justice to the amount of work you have to do to understand what you are talking about ... and you aren't assured of getting it right, of course. However, the statements that this hypothesis has some support in the data was based on this exact type of analysis, and are clearly not of the "look at enough data you'll find what you want to" kind. You probably have to go to the original source article to find the details (the foreground/background analysis was most of the paper, if I remember correctly).
Your alternate theory, once properly formulated, would also make a prediction as to the number of events of this kind that are expected ... go make that prediction, and then we can test it :-)
Re:More BBC 'science'.. (Score:2)
Re:More BBC 'science'.. (Score:3, Funny)
You know, that's usually what I do for fun. I and 6 of my friends get drunk then each break into the seven nearest seismographic reseach stations. Then (with our watches synchronized) we all kick the seismographs at the same time then again .73 seconds later (cuz lets face it, .72 is just too hard to pull off).
These guys are real proffessionals though, we could never get to an antarctic station.
I know the real cause.... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:I know the real cause....the Chinese (Score:2, Funny)
Damn Chi-Comms!
But we can't check to see if it happened again. (Score:3, Interesting)
I suspect that funding an archive for this data would be far less expensive than the huge particle physics machines that are searching for similar matter
Not to mention - it might just be worth calculating the orbital path of the particles that were (or might be) detected, just to make sure that they aren't coming back. Given the energy they apparently release, this could even be an alternate explanation for the Tunguska explosion in Siberia. (Other than exploding meteorites that don't leave a crater, and a misfire [google.com] of Tesla's Death Ray.)
Where can I get.... (Score:4, Funny)
Will lining it with tinfoil help?
I called the BBC and they were no help at all.
Surface Damage? (Score:2)
Anyone have any idea what kind of damage would be caused at the surface of the Earth by something like this? Seems to me that it would be significant, peculiar, and unique.
And in that case, shouldn't they visit the entry and exit points to see if such damage was caused? I don't see anything in the article that suggests this kind of investigation will, or should, be done.
I'm a bit puzzled.
Re:Surface Damage? (Score:2)
Ah. I see now that some discussion has already taken place [slashdot.org] in an earlier posting to science.slashdot.
Re:Surface Damage? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Surface Damage? (Score:2)
Small and clean going in.
Big and messy going out.
Re:Surface Damage?/Nope (Score:2)
Small and clean going in.
Big and messy going out.
Ok first of all a bullet is designed to expand and release it's engery in the form of expansion. Thusly thats why they have little holes going in and big holes going out as the bullet expands and releases alot of it's energy. Bullets that have a full metal case do not leave big holes at all.
The other thing is like many other people have brought up that this is smaller than the size of a cell and has the mass of of aprox 1 ton. I do not know how fast it is going but I saw a post that said 400k/sec. If it does not have enough frontal area or expansion ability (very small very dense) it will squish in and snap back on the surfance and thusly cause vibrations but the hole it would leave would be extremly small. It would also produce vibration as it traveld through the object and came out the other side but agian probably not do much damage.
Like that weapon they had in the movie "eraser" was total BS. It fired a
If I'm wrong please feel free to correct me/discuss it.
Re:Surface Damage? (Score:2)
There would be no visual evidence of the impact, not even microscopical - the particles would just rip through, and then the material they went through would collapse back onto itself.
My only objection to this would be that they obviously have enough of an effect to cause a measurable seismic disturbance. I believe they must have some effect at the surface, even if it's just microscopic.
Perhaps their only effect is totally transient; this would explain why we have to resort to real-time seismic measurements to detect them.
Re:Surface Damage? (Score:3, Funny)
Man, are you crazy? Leaving the house? There are neutrinos out there, man! Nothing can stop them! We're all going to die!
Re:Surface Damage? (Score:2)
This could make for quite an explosion as that mass entered the atmosphere - my math is based on pure guesswork, but it seems that the combination of hydrogen ice, heated to a plasma in a shockwave, and the massive strangelet creates an extremely high local pressure and temperature. (Seems similar enough to the designs for mini-black-hole catalyzed fusion that it might even result in a fusion reaction - but I'll not speculate on that.)
The two entry points noted here - one was in barren antarctic land and the other in the uninhabited and infrequently traveled southern ocean - could have had a multiple megaton blast associated with them, but there would be nothing at the surface to retain evidence - no trees to be knocked down, nothing permanent to record the event, out of the scan area of most satellites, that even if there WAS an explosion, we would be unlikely to find any evidence.
Then again - I've already wondered elsewhere if this couldn't explain the Tunguska explosion.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
I thought (Score:2)
Now that's FAST!! (Score:5, Funny)
now that's what i call a .
QUARK EXPRESS
BOOO! (Score:2)
Occam's Razor (Score:2, Insightful)
It has to make you wonder what effect it would have if you had the (mis)fortune of standing on the entry or exit point. Spontaneous combustion anyone?
conundrum11
If this thing punched a hole through the Earth... (Score:4, Funny)
Imagine a cluster of these ... (Score:2, Interesting)
These are sneaky bastards: more devious than NEOs come out at us in the direction of the Sun.
And we cannot even drill a nuke into these suckers.
Hmmmm.... that lifeboat thingy (posted yday) grows more pertinent by the minute.
Taco Bell Blamed for Paired 2002 Seismic Events (Score:2)
Link to original paper (Score:5, Informative)
Not to karma whore or anything
This seems like an amazing amount of work - they went through nearly 10 million seismic event records, from 1981 to 1993.
I know that Quark is responsible (Score:3, Funny)
Sisko: "You think Quark had anything to do with it?"
Odo: "I always investigate Quark"
So where did it come from? (Score:5, Interesting)
Any good amateur rocket/astronomy folks out there? If you shot something from Antartica opposite the direction of the tip of India at 450km/sec, on October 22, 1993, 09:55:57 GMT, where would it go?
Either my Math or Geography sucks (Score:4, Insightful)
It was estimated that the strange quark matter might pass through the earth at 400 km per second (250 miles per second), 40 times the speed of seismic waves.
-- and --
The other occurred on 24 November, 1993, when an object entered south of Australia and exited the Earth near Antarctica 0.15 of a second later.
So are Australia and Antartica 37.5 miles apart? Confused.
Slackers.. (Score:5, Funny)
People blame sub-atomic particles for everything now.
What caused those earthquakes? Quarks.
What destroyed the World Trade Center? Quarks.
Who left the toilet seat up? Quarks.
Its about time people took responsibility for their actions and quit blaming the poor quarks.
Re:Slackers.. (Score:3, Funny)
What caused those earthquakes? Terrorists.
What destroyed the World Trade Center? Terrorists.
Who left the toilet seat up? Terrorists.
Now lets all rip on the bill of rights and fight those terrorists!
Quark matter is in fact so heavy (Score:2)
(Yes, this comment is a rip-off, but it's my favorite Farnsworth quote
of all th freakin luck... (Score:2)
quark@home? (Score:5, Interesting)
These guys could use some help. Here's my idea: Put the information on line, distribute a client to analyze it. Surely the possibility of a quark collision is at least as good as finding an intelligent signal from another planet?
Where was the KaBoom? There was supposed to be (Score:2, Funny)
That pesky Earthling has stolen my Strangium-238 Space Modulator!
Seriously, any one read David Brin's Earth?
Maybe they only winged us.
Deep theory, little weight (Score:2)
Antarctica (Score:2)
So where is it? (Score:2)
Is this thing moving at an 'escape' velocity from our solar system? Is it in orbit around the sun like a comet? Can we calculate that orbit and see if it might hit us again?
If these things are so common that they found 2 events in 3 years worth of data, why don't we see buildings occasionally cruble as if hit by a missile?
Get your stories straight... (Score:2)
Quark visited Earth in the 40's, not the 90's. There's no way he altered history in such a way that it'd cause seismic events 50 years later!
It's a good thing I watch a lot of TV, I could have wasted time reading that stupid article.
Re:is a tonne still (Score:3, Informative)
Google is of course your friend. [meridian-specialties.ca]
Soko
Re:is a tonne still (Score:2)
No, a tonne is not (nor has it ever been) 2000 lbs. It's a metric unit, 1000 kg, which comes out to about 2204 lbs.
Re:is a tonne still (Score:2)
Re:I don't think so. (Score:5, Funny)
Are you sure you are a mathematician?
Re:I don't think so. (Score:2, Funny)
Re:I don't think so. (Score:5, Informative)
Hmmm...and I've never heard of Yang-Chibara manifolds and they aren't mentioned anywhere in arxiv.org.
OK, I've been succesfully trolled.
Re:I don't think so. (Score:5, Funny)
"Usually there is some problems..."
Whether or not you're a mathematician is debatable, but I'm pretty sure you'll never get confused with an English major. You have some "specticalular" problems with subject/verb agreements...
"There is almost no experimental proofs for quantum field theory."
Psst! You're a mathematician. You're supposed to be satisfied when the equations work out. Experimental proof is something done by... well... physicists.
"And there is no reasonable argument for the choice of 11 dimensions (1 time, 10 space, 6 compactified)."
Forget the funky math you just did, if you made up new math functions as often as you made up new words ("compactified?"), you'd be the next Newton.
"can by explained much easier due to the fact that several cohomology groups of the Yang-Chibara manifolds are simple and the remaining ones freely generated."
Dude! Paramount is looking for you! They need you to help write the next Star Trek series!
"The other well known phenomena of earth core oszillations"
We're off to see the wizard! The wonderful Wizard of Osz!
Re:Real reason (Score:4, Informative)
In fact, many governments do seismic monitoring (read: spying) specifically for underground blasts so they know who's letting off bombs.
I have worked at the Pacific Geoscience Centre in Sidney, BC, Canada for 4 years and have a close friend who worked on doing signal interpretation for several months.
"Unassociated events" are the ones they can't put a finger on what caused it. That's why these scientists were looking at those specific records.
Re:Some info about strangelets (Score:4, Informative)
Bzzt. Not all matter. Electrons, positrons, and neutrinos, and their respective muon and tau counterparts, are all in the lepton family and do not consist of quarks. Not to mention bosons (photon, gluon, W, Z) but those shouldn't count against you because they aren't typically thought of as constituting matter.