  Several experiments (e.g., Milagro and IceCube) have reported the presence in
the sky of regions with significant excess in the arrival direction
distributions of Galactic cosmic rays in the TeV to PeV energy range. Here we
study the possibility that these hotspots are a manifestation of the peculiar
nature of these cosmic rays, and of the presence of molecular clouds near the
sources. We propose that stable quark matter lumps or so-called "strangelets"
can be emitted in the course of the transition of a neutron star to a more
compact astrophysical object. A fraction of these massive particles would lose
their charge by spallation or electron capture in molecular clouds located in
the immediate neighborhood of their source, and propagate rectilinearly without
decaying further, hence inducing anisotropies of the order of the cloud size.
With reasonable astrophysical assumptions regarding the neutron star transition
rate, strangelet injection and neutralization rates, we can reproduce
successfully the observed hotspot characteristics and their distribution in the
sky.
