Now with Added Tralphium!

[beamjockey]

In googling while thinking about James Nicoll's question, I learned a new word: Tralphium.

It came from the puckish physicist and science-popularizer George Gamow. Presumably he was thinking about the name for hydrogen-2, "deuterium." "Tralphium" was Gamow's word for the isotope helium-3: two protons, one neutron. It's like an alpha particle, but lighter, having only three nucleons instead of four.

Though a few writers used it in a few books, the word didn't catch on. Too bad. Wouldn't "lunar tralphium mines" sound better than "lunar helium-3 mines?" And "tralphons" would sound better than the awkward "helium-3 nuclei."

Comments

Wot?

[lsanderson.livejournal.com]

You expect an American tongue to enunciate an "l" and then a "ph" sound? It can't be done! Besides, it's almost like exercise.

Re: Wot?

[le-trombone.livejournal.com]

My buddy Ralph would like to discuss this with you.

Come to think of it, the British composer Ralph Vaughn William's first name is pronounced "Rafe", so maybe you're on to something.

[peteralway.livejournal.com]

Alfalfa is pronounceable, but it sure doesn't roll of the tongue. I find the word Tralphium repugnant somehow. Helium 3 actually sounds cooler to my ear.

[purpleranger.livejournal.com]

Do you by any chance know how the word "tralphium" was coined?

[beamjockey.livejournal.com]

I do not. I can offer you a picture:


I can also say that, around the time Gamow was thinking about what is today called "primordial nucleosynthesis," he had a graduate student named Ralph, so that might have influenced his imagination in coining a name for the helium-3 nucleus. Together they published a paper on the subject that has become legendary in the folklore of physics.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

Interesting that the chart imagines starting with just neutrons. With no theory of baryosynthesis, I suppose it's the simplest assumption.

[beamjockey.livejournal.com]

That's the way to start off. After a while, they were throwing in electrons, photons, muons and pions.

Cosmology and Controversy: the Historical Development of Two Theories of the Universe by Helge Kragh, which I have googled but not read, reviews Gamow's and Alpher's progress in making increasingly elaborate calculations of Big Bang nucleosynthesis.

It didn't help that some of the interesting cross-sections were classified information at the time. They got Fermi and Turkevich interested in the problem, as noted in the caption above, but those guys never did publish their work, so it was reported through Gamow's writings.

"Tralphium" and "tralphas" flopped. Other physicists did not use the words, only a few science writers who relied on Gamow as their guide to physics-- including Isaac Asimov.

It may amuse you to know that, in the course of pushing astrophysics back to the moment of creation, Gamow literally rewrote the Book of Genesis.

The reference to tralphium in Wikipedia's article on helium-3 ought to be removed, or downgraded. Not tonight.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

Speaking of which, "ylem" is another good old word you don't see much any more:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ylem

I guess mostly because the current action in particle cosmology is all trying to figure out stuff that happened prior to that stage (such as how you get more quarks than antiquarks).

[le-trombone.livejournal.com]

...so that might have influenced his imagination in coining a name...

It is this sort of thinking that makes one wonder if his grad student met Cordwainer Smith.

(Fred Pohl actually gave Smith's stories some of their great titles, but it can't be what happened in this case because it didn't appear in Pohl's magazine.)