Einstein's Letter to Roosevelt..
19 Jul 2010 22:24:16 UTC
Topic 195199
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There are some who can live without wild things and some who cannot. - Aldo Leopold
Einstein's Letter to Roosevelt..
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Einstein signed it but it was written by Leo Szilard.
Tullio
Interestingly, Lise Mitneir
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Interestingly, Lise Mitneir (not sure of spelling) came up with the fission equations that Otto Hahn claimed were his. Hitler almost had the bomb first. Fortunately, he was done in. It is amazing the role women played in the E=MC2 drama.
Lise Meitner. Emilio Segre'
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Lise Meitner. Emilio Segre' writes in a book of his that Ida Noddack had suggested in 1935 the right interpretation of the experiments done in Rome by Fermi and his group, that is the fission of uranium nuclei but nobody had believed her.
Tullio
RE: Hitler almost had the
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There was quite a debate under historians just how close Nazi Germany got in its military nuclear program. I think a good summary is "German National Socialism and the Quest for Nuclear Power, 1939-49" by Mark Walker.
The consensus seems to be that at the end of WWII, Nazi Germany was close to or had just achieved sustained, controlled chain reaction in a reactor, something scientists had achieved in Chicago in 1942. Research on "nuclear explosives" (Kernsprengstoff) was performed by several institutes and groups who competed for scarce resources and were managed in a rather inefficient way, a far cry from what is now known as "The Manhattan Project" in the US. The reason for this comparatively slow progress in retrospect seems to be (to a good degree) plain arrogance: at first, the military establishment was convinced to win the war very fast, so that there was no need for a super weapon at all. It could wait. Later in the war, when defeat became a possibility even in the minds of the leaders, arrogance again led them to believe that there was no need to expedite the program: surely only German physicists would be able to develop this weapon first. Needless to say, the physicists that had emigrated from Nazi-Germany or other parts of Europe to the US or USSR were regarded as inferior by Nazi-doctrine, and military planners just lacked the imagination to envision an effort on the scale of the Manhattan project. Fortunately.
CU
HBE
Very recently a physics
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Very recently a physics professor from the University of Bologna put forward a hypothesis on the mysterious disappearance of Ettore Majorana between Palermo and Naples in 1938. He says that Majorana cooperated with Heisenberg in the German nuclear bomb project. I feel this totally insane and revolting. Majorana probably killed himself for reasons that had nothing to do with nuclear energy. Now physicists are looking for "Majorana fermions", particles that are their own antiparticles.
Tullio
There is some interesting
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There is some interesting coverage shown in History channel that japanese were also doing nuclear bomb research during early 40's but that is possibly much slower than german research. But since germans and japanese were allies at that time there should be certain nuclear research sharing between these two.
RE: There is some
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At least there was a last ditch attempt to ship (in a submarine, U 234) the remaining heritage of Nazi-Germany's advanced weapons programs to Japan after German defeat became imminent. The submarine was intercepted in May 1945 and allegedly also carried half a ton of uranium oxide. It is unclear what happened to the material later, it may well have entered the uranium processing of the Manhattan Project.
CU
HB
RE: RE: There is some
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As of this source possibly japanese nuclear bomb project was almost competing with american project but likely gotten slower through all kinds of reasons. I have not watched it completely.
It is obvious that since whole europe was announcing nuclear research advancements during 30's so as newly emerging military empire japan should have collected good information on that.