Word: atomically
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Treasure Trove. Almost from the day the atom was split and its energy harnessed, scientists around the world have been longing for such an opportunity to climb over national fences to talk, teach, speculate and dream about the atom's future. By the end of World War II, they knew that they had found a treasure of incredible value. They stood like the openmouthed shepherd boys in an ancient tale who stumbled on the entrance of a cave heaped high with jew els. The deeper they looked the more treasure they saw - and the cave went on for ever...
There are mathematicians and theoretical physicists who think in strange abstractions, practical physicists who deal in billions of volts of energy and hundred-millionths of seconds, chemists who juggle beakers of death-dealing radiation, engineers who work to microscopic tolerances in strange new metals, biologists who use the atom in delicate life experiments, physicians who enlist the atom as a strong new ally against disease and death...
...really lousy." Libby got a Guggenheim Fellowship and moved to Princeton, but a few months later the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and he offered his services to Nobel Prizewinner Harold Urey. Urey arranged for Libby's transfer to Columbia University, and he plunged into the historic Manhattan (atom bomb) Project, working through the war with great effect on the key problem of separating the isotopes of uranium. Not until news of the Hiroshima bomb came out did Libby mention his work at home. On that day he came home with a tall stack of newspapers and said triumphantly: "This...
Scientist Libby. for all his years at work inside the secrets of atomic energy, has never seen an atomic explosion, and does not want to. His main concern has long been not the atomic boom, but the atomic boon. It was because of his interest in the peaceful atom that he fell so naturally into his key role at Geneva's revolutionary conclave...
...least, it will save that amount of effort for nations that have not yet gotten that far with the atom. Another example is "cross sections." the term that nuclear physicists use to describe how strongly an element absorbs neutrons of different energies. Cross sections are difficult to measure, and there are thousands of them. The U.S. has been lavish with cross-section figures and curves. Russia's Vavilov has confided that they will help his country enormously in its peaceful atom work...