Would that be a 1920’s style death stare?
Whoah, hey! I actually answered a question first for a change. How the hell did that happen? 
It is possible, albeit perhaps unlikely, that strange matter (“quarkium”) may be stable outside of “strange stars”.
This question may well be infinite. It will all depend upon the newest discoveries of a particular scientific era, including the heaviest “flavor” of the year, so to speak. If you’re asking “as of 2003”, I believe all ( or most… lol) of the above replies are on target.
Basically for any given sphere of space, the highest density for that sphere would be a black hole with Schwarzchild radius that is equal to the radius of the sphere. If you try to add any more matter to the sphere you would get a black hole with a radius larger than the radius of the sphere which would be less denser.
Awwwww! Chefguy You too! Damn, no respect for tradition.
Last I heard a black hole has three known characteristics:
- Mass
- Charge
- Angular Momentum
In addition, the smaller the black hole (i.e., the smaller the Schwarzchild radius), the “brighter” it becomes (Hawking radiation).
http://www.lns.cornell.edu/spr/1999-12/msg0020276.html
I seems to me that a derivative of the mass verses density could determine where the peak density occurs. Anyone wish to venture into this?
Also, how expensive and rare is osmium? Can I by it by the ton? or am looking at the world’s most exotic and expensive paperweight?
The 2001-2002 CRC Handbook says that either Osmium or Iridium are the heaviest elements, but that “the data do not allow selection between the two”.
It also says that Francium has the “highest equivalent weight of any element” - what do they mean by that?
The smaller you make the hole, the denser it becomes, without any known limit. It’s possible that quantum gravity will put some sort of upper bound on it, but since we don’t yet have quantum gravity, we don’t know what that would be. Now, because of the Hawking radiation, a very small (and hence very dense) black hole won’t last very long, but while it does last, it’ll still be denser than a larger, dimmer hole.
Yeah, black hole matter would be the densest, but you’ll never be able to put it on a scale.
Osmium is the densest element.
Are there any compounds with higher density?
Equivalent weight is the atomic or formula weight of an element, compound or ion divided by its valency.
(Cite)
Valency (or valence in US parlance) is a measure of the “combining power” of an element, in other words how many atoms of other stuff it can react with - defined as how many hydrogen atoms it will replace in a formula.
Francium has a valence of 1; iridium +3 or +4, osmium usually +3,+4, +6, or +8.
You may be thinking of Ozma
An Iron Butterfly album.
Howyadoin,
“Early in 2002, astronomers using the Chandra x-ray telescope announced the possible detection of a new type of star denser than neutron stars but not dense enough to become black holes. Dubbed quark stars, they are believed to be composed entirely of quarks, the fundamental subatomic particles that make up protons and neutrons. Such quark stars would be so dense that a teaspoonful would weigh billions of tons.”
From:
http://www.calacademy.org/calwild/summer2002/stories/suns2.html
Possible detection = grain of salt, perhaps?
-Rav
Yes. And what sets scientists aside from other folks is the fact that the researchers who discoverd them would be the first to admit it. Quark stars don’t require all that big a grain of salt: Theoretically, there’s no reason they shouldn’t exist, and the Chandra observations seem consistent with what the theories would predict. But they’re believed to be extremely rare, we only have a handful of objects suspected of being quark stars, and all the observational evidence thus far is from a single type of observation, so no, we’re not certain.
ROTFLMAO!
I worked there for a bit and it was hell.
Slee
now THAT’S funny…