cosmon
{{Short description|Hypothetical form of matter}}
{{Infobox particle|image_size=200px|image=Image:Visual_illustration_of_idea_of_cosmonium.png|theorized=1946}}
In physical cosmology, a cosmon or cosmonium is a hypothetical form of matter. The idea was originally proposed by Georges Lemaître, who suggested the concept of a "primeval atom" (L'Hypothèse de l'Atome Primitif) 1946, leading up to the theory of the Big Bang.{{cite book |last=Lemaître |first=Georges |date=1946 |title=L'Hypothèse de l'Atome Primitif |trans-title=Hypothesis of the Primal Atom
|language=fr |publisher=Neuchâtel, Éditions du griffon |oclc=9863653 }} He illustrated the idea by imagining an object 30 times larger than the volume of the sun containing all the matter of the Universe. Its density would be around .{{cite book |last=Kragh |first=Helge |editor-first1=Holder |editor-last1=D. Rodney |editor-first2=Mitton |editor-last2=Simon |date=2012-10-04 |chapter=‘The Wildest Speculation of All’: Lemaître and the Primeval-Atom Universe |title=Georges Lemaître: Life, Science and Legacy |publisher=Springer |location=Berlin Heidelberg |series=Astrophysics and Space Science Library |volume=395 |pages=29–38 |doi=10.1007/978-3-642-32254-9_3 | issn=0067-0057 | isbn=978-3-642-32254-9 }} In his view, this occurred somewhere between 20 and 60 billion years ago.{{cite encyclopedia |title=Georges Édouard Lemaître |encyclopedia=Encarta Multimedia Encyclopedia |year=2009 |publisher=Microsoft Corporation, Microsoft® Student 2009 [DVD]|location=Redmond, WA }}
The idea of a primeval “super-atom” lived on and was developed by Maurice Goldhaber in 1956. In his proposal, there would have been a point, which had been called a universon, that would have collapsed into a cosmon and anti-cosmon pair. Goldhaber's theory suffered from the fact that matter existed at all if equal amounts of matter and antimatter were formed in the 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 Goldhaber's model, the cosmon and anticosmon would have flown apart, therefore explaining the issue without asymmetry.{{cite journal| last=Goldhaber | first=Maurice | date=1956-08-03| title=Speculations on Cosmogony | journal =Science | volume=124 | issue=3214 | pages=218–219 | bibcode= 1956Sci...124..218G| doi=10.1126/science.124.3214.218| issn=0036-8075| pmid=17838075}}
In 1989, Hans Dehmelt attempted to modernize the idea of the primeval atom. In this hypothesis, cosmonium would have been the heaviest form of matter at the beginning of the Big Bang.{{cite journal| last=Dehmelt| first=Hans | date=1990-07-01| title=Experiments with an isolated subatomic particle at rest | journal =Reviews of Modern Physics | volume=62 | issue=3| pages=218–219 | bibcode = 1990RvMP...62..525D| doi =10.1103/RevModPhys.62.525 }}{{cite journal
| last=Dehmelt| first=Hans | date=1989-11-01
| title=Triton,... electron,... cosmon,...: An infinite regression?| journal =Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
| volume=86 | issue=22| pages=8618–8619 | bibcode = 1989PNAS...86.8618D| doi = 10.1073/pnas.86.22.8618| pmid=16594084 | pmc=363482| doi-access=free }}