EVIDENCE AGAINST A STRANGE GROUND-STATE FOR BARYONS

We argue that if strange quark matter were the ground state of baryons at zero pressure and if some observed compact stars (or some cosmic rays) are strange, then the interstellar medium is so contaminated by strangelets that essentially all "neutron" stars in the disk of the galaxy would have to be quark stars: Strangelet contamination would apparently vastly exceed the minimum abundance needed to seed all newly born neutron stars. Because observed glitches seem not to be compatible with quark stars, a strange quark ground state is unlikely.