[fastball]

You don't think a civilization with sufficiently advanced nanotech could fabricate a material that would flummox x-ray diffraction? That seems a bit short-sighted to me. Our imaging and composition technologies are not sufficiently advanced to determine exact structures of anything - we still have to include many assumptions in order for the data to make sense.

For x-ray diffraction in particular, we assume all materials are made from atoms. However, we all know that quarks and more exist, so you don't think it's possible that an advanced race could make a material that skips that atom part?

[mindcrime]

However, we all know that quarks and more exist, so you don't think it's possible that an advanced race could make a material that skips that atom part?

This sounds like pure sci-fi to me. AFAIK, everything we know about physics suggests that there are no stable substances made up of sub-atomic particles in a way that "skips the atom part". If that were possible, it would be in the realm of "entirely new physics".

Not to say that it's not possible of course... you don't know what you don't know and all that. But the Standard Model seems to be pretty firmly grounded and I haven't seen anything to suggest that it allows for such a thing. Personally, my bayesian prior on this being possible would be awfully close to 0 right now.

Then again, maybe it's Dwarf Star Alloy.[1]

[1]: tardis.wikia.com/wiki/Dwarf_star_alloy

[stordoff]

Close to but definitely non-zero IMO. The quark model has been around for less than 100 years; push that out to, say, 1000 year time-scale, and I could certainly see it developing entirely new physics compared to what we now know. The Standard Model is well-founded, but explaining the things it currently doesn't (gravity/dark energy/neutrino masses etc.) could well require it.

[mratzloff]

> However, we all know that quarks and more exist, so you don't think it's possible that an advanced race could make a material that skips that atom part?

Quarks combine via the strong force into baryons, the most common of which are particles that form the nucleus of atoms and anti-atoms, and mesons, which are unstable and immediately decay into electrons, photons, neutrinos, etc.

Of the baryons, protons are stable, neutrons less-so, and the rest decay immediately. Perhaps there is a configuration of non-nucleon quarks that bond together into a kind of stable matter that we have yet to discover, but it seems more likely to me that if (and that's a big "if") there were exotic matter in a warehouse in Las Vegas, it would consist of novel alloys or other such materials.

Disclaimer: I'm not a nuclear physicist.