Citations:ylem

English citations of ylem

1. (astronomy, cosmology, physics, now chiefly historical) In the Big Bang theory, the hot and dense plasma which made up the cosmos at the time of recombination in an early stage of its expansion and cooling, when the first atoms formed and photons decoupled. The ylem is regarded as the source of the cosmic microwave background. [from 1948.]
   • 1948 December 1, R[alph] A[sher] Alpher, “A Neutron-capture Theory of the Formation and Relative Abundance of the Elements”, in Physical Review, volume 74, number 11, College Park, Md.: American Physical Society, →DOI, →OCLC, page 1581, column 1:

     Very shortly after the beginning of the universal expansion, the ylem was a gas of neutrons only. [Footnote: According to Webster's New International Dictionary, 2nd Ed., the word ‘ylem’ is an obsolete noun meaning ‘The primordial substance from which the elements were formed.’ It seems highly desirable that a word of so appropriate a meaning be resurrected.]

   • 1949 July–September, George Gamow, “On Relativistic Cosmogony”, in Reviews of Modern Physics, volume 21, number 3, page 367:

     When, due to the progressing expansion, the temperature of the ylem dropped below 1090K, protons and neutrons began to stick together forming the composite nuclei of deuterium […]

   • 1954 March, George Gamow, Scientific American, pages 61–62:

     As the Universe went on expanding and the temperature of ylem dropped, protons and neutrons began to stick together, forming deuterons […] and heavier elements.

   • 1959, James Blish, chapter 7, in A Clash of Cymbals [US title: The Triumph of Time] (Cities in Flight; 4), London: Faber and Faber, →ISBN, page 171:

     The ylem was the primordial flux of neutrons out of which all else emerged.

   • 1974, Henley Frauenfelder, Subatomic Physics, volume 18, page 475:

     It [the cosmic background radiation] is interpreted as the radiation that is left over from the primordial fireball and thus provides some information about the conditions in the ylem.

   • 1988–1996, Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time: The Illustrated, Updated and Expanded edition, page 145:

     George Gamow emerges in this collage as the genie of a bottle of Ylem, the hypothetical primordial material of the big bang.

   • 2001, A. Zee, Einstein's Universe, page 120:

     Out of primeval energy and cosmic expansion and the violation of baryon number and CP conservation we make the broth of matter, Gamow's ylem.

   • 2001, Martin Rees, Our Cosmic Habitat, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, pages 65–66:

     He [Lemaître] called this the "primeval atom"; but that phrase never caught on. Nor did the word "ylem" introduced by the boisterous Russian-American, George Gamow. These coinages were usurped by "Big Bang" — a flippant term that Fred Hoyle introduced in the 1950s as a derisive description of a theory he didn’t like.

   • 2001, Ralph A. Alpher, Robert Herman, Genesis of the Big Bang, page 2:

     The bottle was labeled YLEM by Gamow (the word, found by Herman in a large dictionary, […]

   • 2004, Simon Singh, Big Bang, page 314:

     So he [Gamow] assumed that the initial components of the universe would have been separate protons, neutrons and electrons, the most fundamental particles known to physics at the time. He called this mix ylem, […]

   • 2006, Paul Davies, The Goldilocks Enigma, pages 157–158 and 314:

     […] in the early 1950s, [Gamow] composed the following witty account of the significance of Hoyle’s discovery, which he called ‘New Genesis’: / In the beginning God created radiation and ylem. And ylem was without shape or numbers, and the nucleons were running madly over […] / […] had to obtain the same abundances which would have resulted from nucleosynthesis in ylem, […]

   • 2008, Piers Bizony, “Part Eight, Ylem”, in Atom, Thriplow, Cambridgeshire: Icon, →ISBN, page 171:

     He [George Gamow] surmised that that the universe began as a super-condensed raging inferno of protons, neutrons and electrons, which he and his colleagues called the ylem […] The internal pressures of the ylem caused it to expand outward extremely rapidly. After a few minutes the ylem cooled down sufficiently to allow the strong force to bind neutrons and protons together into deuterium nuclei. […] Then there was just enough time for some of the deuterium to fuse into helium before temperatures and pressures of the ylem became too diffuse to allow more fusions.