Reasoning:
- A dangerous (stable, negative) strangelet stopping in lunar matter would seed conversion of the Moon to strange matter; the Moon is still ordinary rock, so no dangerous strangelet has ever been produced and stopped there in ~4.5 Gyr of exposure.
- Since strangelet production becomes less likely as collision energy rises (thermodynamic argument), the huge lunar exposure at AGS-and-up equivalent energies bounds production at all collider energies of interest — and the LHC sits at the least-favorable energy of all.
- Assumption A (species): iron-on-iron vs gold-on-gold comparability, previously a judgment call, is now backed by RHIC Cu+Cu data (copper ≈ iron) matching the same thermal particle-furnace model as Au+Au. Assumption B (kinematics): cosmic-ray CM frames move fast in the lunar frame, and fast strangelets are broken up before stopping, so the bound needs some strangelets produced slow in the CM; measured RHIC velocity distributions of all species are similar to or broader than the distribution the 2000 study assumed, supporting it. The only way to void the lunar bound is to posit strangelet production exclusively at exactly central rapidity, which particle-production phenomenology contradicts.
Step 6 — validity verdict
approved / checked. Reconstruction — premises: (i) a slow, stable, negatively charged strangelet stopping in lunar rock converts the Moon; (ii) ~4.5 Gyr of Fe-on-Fe cosmic-ray exposure at collider-equivalent conditions; (iii) Cu+Cu follows the same thermal systematics as Au+Au (species comparability); (iv) measured velocity/rapidity spreads are as broad as or broader than assumed, so not all strangelets are too fast to stop; (v) production probability falls with collision energy (thermodynamic argument), so the bound extends downward-in-favorability to the LHC. Conclusion by modus tollens: the Moon persists, so no dangerous strangelet was ever produced and stopped; (v) carries the bound to collider energies. The hidden premise — production not confined to exactly central rapidity — is surfaced explicitly in the body and is precisely what (iv) supports, so the enthymeme is honest, not forced. No undercutting defeater survives once the premises are granted; the truth of (iii)-(v) is priced in step 8, not here. Load-bearing step traced directly.