Of what did Ylem consist?

Question

Of what did Ylem consist?

Answer 1

Yeah, well, you'd call it a very hot and dense plasma.

We're still pretty far from being able to produce it in the lab, the LHC notwithstanding.

It might still exist inside of quark stars.  We've finally seen supernovae - which you might call hypernovae, which appear to be the kind of thing that might generate quark stars.  So, who knows, maybe we'll be able to study some of these beasts soon.

Answer 2

As best as we can tell, it consisted of what we would call pure energy (mostly because we do not know what can exist, physically, at that temperature).

At the Planck Time (very close to time=zero, but not quite zero), the temperature -- a.k.a. energy density -- was so high that every single point would have been a black hole.  During the first second, the bosons (carriers of the forces) condensed out of the Ylem.  Then the quarks and the rest of what we call the basic particles of matter (that lasted three minutes).

The Ylem (the stuff that existed after the Planck Time but before the bosons) would be whatever you get if you succeed in getting all the bosons back together.

It is the stuff of the "Grand Unification Theory"

Answer 3

when they were first figuring out the math to big bang nuleosynthesys, the assumption was that the universe was composed of neutrons and photons.  thats it.   the neutrons decayed into protons and electrons and some of these protons merged with other protons or neutrons to create the other elements up to Li7.

Answer 4

Oh, mate, I can't remember....

I know what you're talking about, though. Have you tried the New Scientist website? They'll have articles about that, for sure