It's fairly trite to hear that "common sense is a poor guide to understanding reality", but articles like this one really bring the phrase home:
Earth is facing another threat from outer space. Scientists have come to the conclusion that two mysterious explosions in the 1990s were caused by bizarre cosmic missiles.
The two objects were picked up by earthquake detectors as they tore through Earth at up to 900,000 mph. According to scientists, the most plausible explanation is that they were "strangelets", clumps of matter that have so far defied detection but whose existence was posited 20 years ago.
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Strangelets - sometimes also called strange-quark nuggets - are predicted to have many unusual properties, including a density about ten million million times greater than lead. Just a single pollen-size fragment is believed to weigh several tons.
So an infinitesimal dot of strangelet matter weighs more than your car, your fattest friends, and most of your kitchen appliances combined. And these things hurtle through space, occasionally blasting deep into the earth. That's a fairly weird concept, no?
