protomatter

English

Alternative forms

• proto-matter

Etymology

proto- +‎ matter

Noun

protomatter (uncountable)

1. (philosophy) The ultimate basis of physical substance, before it has been given form.
   • 1996, William A Wallace, The Modeling of Nature, →ISBN:

     Perhaps the last named, mass-energy, comes closest to converying the Aristotelian idea of protomatter as the basic stuff of the universe. Whatever quarks may be, or leptons and hadrons in their various forms, it seems generally agreed that all are manifestations of mass-energy, the ultimate matrix to which science seems to have come in identifying the material cause of the universe.

   • 2001, James W. Felt, Coming to Be: Toward a Thomistic-Whiteheadian Metaphysics of Becoming, →ISBN:

     The owl's process of assimilation makes it impossible any longer for the mouse's substantial form to animate the mouse's protomatter, so it is replaced in its functioning by the substantial form of the owl. A mouse can become an owl (or part of an owl) preciesely because there is inherent in the mouse a principle of determinability that includes a capability to be owl. That principle, protomatter, is actualized (by the mouse-form) in the mouse, but is potentiality to be actualized in other ways.

   • 2012, Robert S. Cohen, Marx W. Wartofsky, Proceedings of the Boston Colloquium for the Philosophy of Science 1964/1966, →ISBN:

     Rephrasing Heisenberg's solution, one could say that the explanation of massive, kinetic, and electromagnetic phenomena, all of which may be regarded as real, requires some underlying substrate or ultimate matter or protomatter that itself is real but only in a potential way.

   • 2013, Mark Graves, Insight to Heal: Co-Creating Beauty amidst Human Suffering, →ISBN, page 98:

     Protomatter is a potential for existence that requires the creative act of a substantial form to bring a particular substance into existence. In other words, although protomatter could exist as any particular substance, substantial form constrains protomatter into a particular substance.

2. (physics) A hypothetical substance from which the universe is created.
   • 1983, Einstein and the Philosophical Problems of 20th Century Physics, page 325:

     It is possible that the two principal alternative conceptions of the inexhaustibility of the microworld (an infinite "linear" hierarchy of structures or some primordial entity infinite in itself— single "protomatter" or an infinite number of simplest and equally elementary constituents) do not exhaust all approaches that are feasible here.

   • 2009, Gary Weise, The Origin of Space Stars Planets and Life, →ISBN, page 19:

     The diameter of a protomatter unit is the smallest possible separation of space. Protomatter is durable because it is indestructable. It is not possible to destroy a piece of nothing. Space is nothing. Protomatter is space.

   • 2012, Uwe Hentschel, Gudmund J.W. Smith, Wolfram Ehlers, The Concept of Defense Mechanisms in Contemporary Psychology, →ISBN:

     First, we have assumptions of different kinds of “protomatter,” such as electrons, protons, and neutrons.

   • 2007, Physics, Uspekhi - Volume 50, page 973:

     For instance, particles of matter can be produced in this way (e.g., see Refs [1, 2]) (although, in particular, relict photons appeared as a result of the decay of protomatter in the early Universe).

3. (science fiction) An unstable substance that is powerful and dangerous.
   • 1995, Elaine Hinman-Sweeney, Hardwear/Softwear: Take a Walk on the Cyber Side, West End Games, Incorporated, →ISBN:

     The No Damage option occurs when the computers are directed to control the protomatter environment from directly harming the user. This is because MegaCorps prefer their executives alive rather than dead.

   • 2009, James Swallow, Titan #6: Synthesis, →ISBN, page 375:

     No worlds, no stars, nothing but a raging sea of churning no-forms, the empty vessel of another universe eaten alive by protomatter, consumed and converted and fed upon until nothing else remained.

   • 2012, John Vornholt, The Genesis Wave Book One: Star Trek The Next Generation, →ISBN:

     Pioneering work performed at the Vulcan Science Academy by Dr. Temok and at the Daystrom Institute by Dr. Glenn Hauman indicate that the instabilities in protomatter are the result of interactions between its subatomic constituents and a nine-dimensional 5/2 spin variant on the quark stragelet, which Temok and Hauman have agreed to dub a "changelet."

   • 2016, Ralph Rotten, Memoirs of a Timelord:

     Once quantum compression is achieved, if the singularity has excess collapse inertia it will continue to compress the protomatter until a singularity begins to form at the core, venting protomatter through the regional stellar orifices across the multiverse.