disk utility no option to create a partition(s) on zeroed out disk.

[gene]

to reproduce on a system booted from /dev/sdb:
Step 1: dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda bs=4096 conv=notrunc
Step 2: reboot. fdisk -l will show:
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Disk /dev/sda: 64.0 GB, 64023257088 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 7783 cylinders, total 125045424 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000000

Disk /dev/sda doesn't contain a valid partition table

Disk /dev/sdb: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders, total 976773168 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x0002a442
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At this point there is no way to create nor edit partions using Disk Utility.

This is on ubuntu 11.10
me@me-1:~$ uname -a
Linux me-1 3.0.0-15-generic #26-Ubuntu SMP Fri Jan 20 17:23:00 UTC 2012 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

----- /proc/cpuinfo -----
  processor : 0
  vendor_id : AuthenticAMD
  cpu family : 16
  model : 10
  model name : AMD Phenom(tm) II X4 960T Processor
  stepping : 0
  cpu MHz : 800.000
  cache size : 512 KB
  physical id : 0
  siblings : 4
  core id : 0
  cpu cores : 4