Ylem

Ylem ( or ) is a hypothetical original substance or condensed state of matter, which became subatomic particles and elements as are understood today. The term was used by George Gamow, his student Ralph Alpher, and their associates in the late 1940s, having resuscitated it from Middle English after Alpher found it in Webster's Second dictionary, where it was defined as "the first substance from which the elements were supposed to have been formed."