Posted on 12/24/2008 9:04:00 AM PST by NormsRevenge
On Christmas eve in 1938, the physicist Lise Meitner took a walk in the snowy woods of Kungalv, Sweden, with her nephew, Otto Frisch, also a physicist. A Jewish refugee who had recently escaped from Hitler's Germany, Meitner began discussing with Frisch some puzzling experimental results from a lab in Berlin.
By the time their famous walk was over, Meitner had scribbled down for the first time the equations that demonstrated the possibility of extracting huge amounts of energy from the splitting or "fission" of uranium atoms. Seventy years ago today, the woman whom Albert Einstein called "our Madame Curie" ushered us into the nuclear age.
Meitner wanted nothing to do with the military use of the unprecedented energy she had discovered. Still, the insights of Meitner and others made it possible to create the bombs used to conclude World War II in the tragedies of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the great taboo has held since then. But it may not last much longer. As we contemplate the prospect of nuclear weapons in the hands of North Korea and Iran, it would seem that the advance of science has outpaced the needed capacities of human stewardship.
...
Our physical world is the product of long-ago nuclear explosions, whose vast energy remains stored in the atoms of our planet. Hydrogen was forged in the super-high temperatures of the Big Bang, and other basic chemical elements of life, like oxygen and carbon, were created in the cores of early stars, long before the Earth and sun were formed.
As Meitner recognized, the energy from these primordial nuclear power plants is available to us in astonishing abundance.
The technology is already well known. Consider France, which currently generates 80% of its electricity using fission to release the energy inside relatively rare uranium atoms.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
in the tragedies of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Typical. The Times would have preferred the invasion of Japan and the death of millions I guess.
Eve's fault!
Would make a great ad slogan:
Nuclear Energy - It’s a Walk in the Park
Tragedy is part of life itself.
Picture living without it.
I agree. And it *is* tragic that we had to use the bomb to combat our enemies, who had perpetrated atrocities.
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