When nuclear fission was discovered near the end of 1938, it was a totally unanticipated phenomenon. It had been known for decades that an enormous energy was bound up in the atomic nucleus, but there were no clear paths toward gaining experimental, let alone practical, access to that energy. However, the nucleus had already been under intense study throughout the 1930s, as physicists and chemists catalogued the various radioactive elements and their behaviors, came to understand the sources of stability of the nuclei of various isotopes, and transmuted elements by bomarbing them with the newly-discovered neutron and with alpha particles (helium nuclei). Once the initial discovery had been made, the basic outline of the fission process was quickly established, and it did not take long to develop a substantial body of experimental measurement and theory surrounding it.
As an astonishing new development in the physics of the nucleus, fission garned widespread attention, which was further augmented by the implication that fission might be exploited to design new weapons and new sources of power. However, the unprecedented application-oriented research program that developed a few years later can only be understood by taking into account the political context: the 1933 rise to power of Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Party in Germany, and the consequent rise of German militarism and anti-Semitic persecution. Much of the research would be done by scientists who had fled fascist Europe, and the funding, institutional support, and access to personnel that made that research possible was only acquired out of the fear that the Nazis might develop their own fission-based weapon.
http://www.aip.org/history/acap/topics/fission.jsp - Patricia Basconcillo
Walang komento:
Mag-post ng isang Komento