Word: hydrogenate
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...Defense Department would not elaborate, but the reference to "thermonuclear weapons" provided grounds for some informed guesses. Scientists have long known that the only way in sight to start the fusion of hydrogen atoms is by extreme heat-and the only known way to generate such heat is by an atomic explosion. Thus, an atom bomb would have to act as the "trigger" for any H-bomb...
...torch looked like an ordinary oxyacetylene cutter, but its bright white flame (burning powdered aluminum in oxygen) ate into a wall of concrete as though it were candle wax. A second torch, burning fluorine in hydrogen, spat a tiny blue flame that could melt the concrete even faster. Either one, explained scientists of Temple University's Research Institute last week, could knife through any substance known...
Cosmologists, of course, do not know that there was ever any such thing as ylem. What they do know with fair certainty is that the relative abundance of the chemical elements is much the same throughout the universe. Hydrogen is commonest. Except in odd corners like the earth, the heavier elements such as iron, lead, uranium, etc. are extremely scarce...
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...
...Gamow theory collides sharply -with that of British Cosmologists Hoyle and Lyttleton (TIME, Nov. 20), who believe that matter in a constantly expanding universe is being "created" continuously in the form of hydrogen, which gradually turns into heavier elements in the hot hearts of stars. Followers of Gamow agree that the universe is still expanding, as a result of the original explosion of the ylem. What they find harder to explain is why the earth should happen to be at the exact center of the great expansion...