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I am researching something for fan fiction.
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In the movie "Sunshine" the sun is shutting down. The proposed reason is that a "Q-ball", which in theoretical physics is a non-topologic soliton has entered the sun.
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Here is Dr. Brian Cox's explanation: (According to the Sloan Science and Film website)
First posited some 20 years ago by Harvard physicist Sidney Coleman, a Q-Ball is a super-heavy object that could have formed during the Big Bang and would have the ability to break down ordinary matter made of protons and neutrons. Normally, protons are stable because they are the lightest particles to carry a conserved quantum number called the baryon number, and there is no way for them to get rid of this number and decay. But Q-balls, made from tightly packed supersymmetric particles that can accommodate a baryon number at lesser energetic cost than a proton, allow the proton to disintegrate, while the baryon number of the Q-ball increases. Q-Balls, says Dr. Cox, "can be pictured as gi