Word: alpher
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Since this is the case, argue cosmologists led by Dr. George Gamow of George Washington University, all the elements must have originated just after the great event when the ylem exploded. In the March Johns Hopkins Magazine, two cosmologists of the Gamow school, Drs. Ralph A. Alpher and Robert C. Herman, tell how they think the elements were formed...
First Seconds. A few hundred seconds after the great event, say Alpher & Herman, when the universe was filled with a gas made of protons, neutrons and smaller sub-atomic particles, its temperature was about i billion degrees, and through it shot violent gamma rays. At this point, the collisions among the particles and gamma rays were too powerful to allow any of the particles to join together into atomic nuclei...
Under the Alpher-Herman hypothesis, the gas, constantly expanding, soon cooled enough to allow an occasional proton to join with a neutron, forming the two-part nucleus of heavy hydrogen. Then, little by little, larger nuclei were formed, such as lithium, boron and carbon. Most of the nuclei grew by capturing more neutrons. When they captured too many, they became unstable. Then some of the neutrons inside them turned into protons and electrons. The electrons shot off as high-energy beta particles...