On muon bundles from the Universe

Abstract

Abstract. Recently the CERN ALICE experiment, in its dedicated cosmic ray run, observed muon bundles of very high multiplicities, thereby confirming similar findings from the LEP era at CERN (in the CosmoLEP project). We found significant evidence for anisotropy of arrival directions of the observed high multiplicity muonic bundles. The distribution on celestial sphere and the estimated directionality suggests their possible extragalactic source. We argue that muonic bundles of highest multiplicity are produced by strangelets, hypothetical stable lumps of strange quark matter infiltrating our Universe.