Cosmon

Illustration of cosmonium.

Cosmon or cosmonium is a hypothetical form of matter where Universe would have been in dense form of matter as particle named cosmon. Idea was originally proposed by Georges Lemaître who suggested idea of 'primeval atom’ (L'Hypothèse de l'Atome Primitif) 1946.^[1] He illustrated the idea by imagining object 30 times larger volume of sun containing all matter of Universe. Its density would be around ${\displaystyle 10^{15}{\text{g cm}}^{-3}}$.^[2] In his view this exploded somewhere between 20–60 billion years ago.^[3] On this model matter wouldn’t been generated from singularity unlike in current big bang theory.

Idea of primeval “super-atom” lived on and it was developed forward by Maurice Goldhaber in 1956. In his proposal there would have been point, which had been called universon that would have collapsed into cosmon and anticosmon pairs. Goldhaber was wondering about why there is matter if equal amount of matter and antimatter was formed in beginning of big bang. One explanation for this is the asymmetry of matter meaning that there could have been slightly more matter than antimatter, for instance 1001 matter particles to every 1000 antimatter. In Goldhabers model cosmon and anticosmon would have flown apart and therefore explaining issue without asymmetry.^[4]

In 1989 Hans Dehmelt attempted to modernize idea of primeval atom. In this hypothesis Cosmonium would have been heaviest form of matter at the beginning of big bang.^[5][6]

References

1. Lemaître, Georges (1946). L'Hypothèse de l'Atome Primitif [Hypothesis of the Primal Atom] (in French). Neuchâtel, Éditions du griffon.
2. Kragh, Helge (2012-10-04). "'The Wildest Speculation of All': Lemaître and the Primeval-Atom Universe". In D. Rodney, Holder; Simon, Mitton. Georges Lemaître: Life, Science and Legacy. Astrophysics and Space Science Library. 395. Berlin Heidelberg: Springer. pp. 29–38. doi:10.1007/978-3-642-32254-9_3. ISBN 978-3-642-32254-9. ISSN 0067-0057. Retrieved 27 August 2016.
3. "Georges Édouard Lemaître". Encarta Multimedia Encyclopedia. Redmond, WA: Microsoft Corporation, Microsoft® Student 2009 [DVD]. 2009.
4. Goldhaber, Maurice (1956-08-03). "Speculations on Cosmogony". Science. American Association for the Advancement of Science. 124 (3214): 218–219. doi:10.1126/science.124.3214.218. ISSN 0036-8075.
5. Dehmelt, Hans (1990-07-01). "Experiments with an isolated subatomic particle at rest". Reviews of Modern Physics. American Physical Society. 62 (3): 218–219. doi:10.1103/RevModPhys.62.525.
6. Dehmelt, Hans (1989-11-01). "Triton,... electron,... cosmon,...: An infinite regression?". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 86 (22): 8618–8619.