Word: alpher
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Dates: during 1951-1951
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...RALPH A. ALPHER AND R. C. HERMAN The Johns Hopkins University Silver Spring...
...universe. It is simply an illusion that may be viewed by anyone driving along a highway . . . when objects . . . seem to be moving in different directions at varying speeds. I am more confirmed in my theory than ever after reading "What [the two cosmologists of the Gamow school, Drs. Ralph Alpher and Robert Herman] find harder to explain is why the earth should happen to be at the exact center of the great expansion...
TIME erred in implying that Cosmologists Alpher and Herman did say so. All the distant galaxies appear to be receding from the earth. This is hard to explain on the basis of one central explosion, unless the earth should happen to be at the point from which the galaxies are receding. No cosmologist, of course, believes that this is the case. A better explanation is that space itself is expanding, making each galaxy move away from the others...
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...
...beta-decay" made the nuclei more stable -able to capture more neutrons. Bigger & bigger they grew, until all the elements in the universe had been formed. Then this growing process stopped; there were no more free neutrons, and the gas had become too cool to support nuclear reactions. Drs. Alpher & Herman believe that all the elements were formed in less than an hour after the great event...