Results of Search for Magnetized Quark-Nugget Dark Matter from Radial Impacts on Earth

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

In addition to my comments, I recommend the authors to shorten by ~factor of 2 the paper length.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

See Response to Reviewer 1. Thank you for your feedback.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

In the middle Eighties, Ed Witten left his natural domain made of strings to have a short incursion into the cosmology of the quark-hadron transition, to introduce what he though to be a fair candidate for DM: the quark nuggets, systems containing a fair amount of quark--hadron plasma forever. There had been much work on QCD in cosmology, and some work continued also later on. But, altogether, the interest in this topic rapidly decayed when it became clear that, according to lattice prediction, no Q-H phase transition could ever occur in the cosmological context: the transition had been somewhat similar to hydrogen "re"combination at z~1100. Unfortunately, no phase transition, no nuggets.

Of course, lattice predictions are not data. Data on the cosmological QH transition will not be obtainable in a foreseable future. This fair statement, together with Witten's "authority", persuaded quite a number of physicists that they still could proceed on a pattern not yet fully falsified, still attracting a fair interest.

It is fair to outline that, although widely working on QCD and cosmology, I think that none should now spend time and energies on a dead track. It is also important to state that I did all efforts not to be biased by my belief.

I find this paper to be a collage of separate work by different researchers. Its incipit and a fair amount of the Introduction is a collage of previous article texts. I am ready to furnish full details on that, but they really matter so little. If a revised version of this work will ever be submitted, try to do a better mix-up of words.

However: (i) I do not understand what improvement on theoretical views has been reacher by these authors; (ii) I find a deep caesura between a  first part related to physics, and a second part related to experimental geophysics.

I find that the authors should provide a short introductory remarks, explaining why they are among those who still believe in quark nuggets, by outlining also a comprehensible outlook on the role of magnetic fields. Since the beginning, however, they should say that the bulk of the paper is geophysical and focus on the progresses done.

 

Author Response

See Response to Reviewer 2.pdf. Thank you for your feedback.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

The hypothesis of absolutely stable strange quark matter (SQM) was proposed decades ago. Despite intense research for almost 40 years, there is still no sound scientific basis on which one could either confirm or reject this hypothesis. The authors discuss the possible detection of highly magnetized SQM nuggets via examining the non-meteorite craters on Earth. In particular, the authors report the excavations of the 1985 non-meteorite crater in County Donegal, Ireland and the corresponding computer simulations, which show indications that the crater was caused by the impact of a magnetized quark nugget (MQN). The study carried out by the authors are interesting and may provide crucial evidence for the exsistence of stable MQN. The calculation, the formulae, and the graphs seem correct and reasonable. I can recommend its publication after the authors introduce more discussions on other experimental efforts, e.g., 1. the JEM-EUSO program [Exp. Astron. 40 (2015) 253]; 2. large liquid scintillator neutrino detectors [Phys. Rev. D 95 (2017) 015010]; 3. other experiments reviewed in [J. Phys. G 32 (2006) S251; Phys. Rep. 582 (2015) 1]; ... Other minor remark: line 686: the reference [45] was not given.

Author Response

See Response to Reviewer 3.pdf. Thank you for your feedback.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 4 Report

This is a very nice and interesting paper addressing the problem of possible existence of macroscopic quark matter and the possible relationship with dark matter.  The investigation of craters that are unlikely to be due to meteors is definitively interesting and worth publishing. 

There are just a few minor changes I would suggest to the paper: most of them are typographical or could help in improving the comprehension of the paper. 

Here follow my comments:

Emails are the same for authors 1 (correct), 2 and 5 (repeated)

VanDevender Enterprises LLC, 7604 Lamplighter Lane NE, Albuquerque, NM 87109 USA; [email protected] 6
2. Sandia National Laboratories, Albuquerque, NM 87185-0840, USA; [email protected] 7
3. Ardaturr, Churchill PO, Letterkenny, Co. Donegal, Ireland; [email protected] 8
4. National Park and Wildlife Service, Glenveagh National Park, Church Hill, County Donegal, F92XK02, Ireland; [email protected] 9
5. Church Hill, Letterkenny, County Donegal, F928982, Ireland, [email protected] 1  

Line 47, briefly explain (and/or quote) the meaning of alpha_c

Line 74, can you explain here where  do you get the >3km/s  limit from? (it is below in line 600 but might help here) Can you briefly mention why you expect no luminous streak from ionization in the air (e.g. DeRuhula 1984 https://www.nature.com/articles/312734a0 ). Energy loss in air vs solid ground should go with density of the material (also according to your eq. 1 on line 444), so be a 1000 times less and then of the order of 8kJ/m. The ionization in air would make it visible in daylight?

Line 116-128 the three references in html should go in the reference section.

Line 130 None of these impacts was preceded by a luminous track in the sky. Can you expand on the absence of luminous track? The brightness was too small (given that they occurred during daytime)

 

Lin 131-132 add a reference to this statement

Line 134-135, I would invert the phrase as something like: Our results indicate that not just human-caused explosions but also MQNs can cause non-meteorite craters

Line 231 (figure 1). Write in the caption what are the white area and the black lines. Also how long after impact are the “snapshots” taken?

Line 311  (D. D and S. McG) à D.D. and S. McG. (dots missing on family name abbreviation)

Line 315 No meteorite material was ever found. Does this mean that the bottom of the pit/lake was investigated? Do you have information on this and could you comment if these searches might have disrupted the site? (probably not)

Line 323, two full stops at the end of the sentence. Do you have a full picture of the crater?

Line 328: (similar to above one) it would be nice/useful to include a picture or drawing of the shape of the crater?

Line 393:  can you put a reference to EDS?

 

Table 1, Bo TT (Tera Tesla) is correct but maybe a little cryptic, maybe write in a different way?

Line 520. Meteorites can survive transit through the atmosphere, but then they fall to the ground without crate. So maybe it might be better to add to the phrase “….and produce a crater.”

Line 623, can you comment on  the possibility that the granite boulder was fractured closer to the surface (at an unknown time, also prior to the 1985 event) and then sunk in the crater?           

Author Response

See Response to Reviewer 4.pdf. Thank you for your review and excellent suggestions.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf