Curvature contribution to the mass of strangelets

The curvature energy is shown to give a very significant contribution to the mass of strangelets. Assuming three massless quark flavors, the energy per baryon is increased by roughly (435 MeV) ${\mathit{A}}^{\mathrm{-}2/3}$ within the MIT bag model, dramatically destabilizing the experimentally accessible strangelets with low baryon number A.