2026-07-072026-07-07http://salesiana.dossiersoluciones.com/handle/123456789/45403After a brief introduction to the physics of bulk strange quark matter (SQM) this review focuses on the properties of low baryon number strangelets presently searched for in ultra-relativistic heavy-ion experiments at CERN and Brookhaven. Shell-model calculations reveal interesting (meta)stability properties in the experimentally accessible regime. A liquid drop model (Fermi-gas model) is shown to explain the overall behavior of the mode-filling calculations, leading to a physical understanding of strangelet properties, which can be generalized to non-zero temperature and pressure.15 pages, LaTeX, figures available on request. Invited review to appear in Proceedings of Strangeness and Quark Matter, Krete, Sep. 1--5 1994 (World Scientific)High Energy Physics - PhenomenologyNuclear Theorytext