Word: atomics
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...announcement caused an embarrassed flurry in high Washington circles. Van Allen learned that, at the suggestion of Physicist Nicholas Christofilos of Livermore Laboratory, the Department of Defense was planning to launch Project Argus, in which three atom bombs would be rocketed above the atmosphere and exploded (TIME, March 30). The high-speed electrons released were expected to be shunted around the earth by the earth's magnetic field. Van Allen's discovery that nature had already provided such electrons was a considerable shock...
THERMOELECTRIC POWER, generated by converting heat directly into electricity (TIME, April 13-20), will be developed for Navy by Westinghouse Electric and Carrier Corp. Contracts for oil-fired prototypes total only $536,475, but are key step to future direct generation of electricity from atom reactors...
...London newspaper reported that German-born Atom Spy Klaus Fuchs, in a British prison since 1950 for passing scientific secrets to the Russians, has been asked by Britain's government to plunge right back into his original line of work (theoretical physics) after he is sprung next June. Fuchs, according to the report, would take his talents, and presumably his refurbished loyalties, to Canada...
...atoms all neat round shapes, as shown in the classroom diagrams? Physicist Arthur J. Freeman of the Watertown (Mass.) Arsenal thinks not. Last week, at the American Physical Society meeting at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he presented evidence from recent experiments at Brookhaven National Laboratory, where billions of reactor-bred neutrons were fired at atoms of magnetic iron, nickel and cobalt. According to Dr. Freeman's mathematical analysis, the neutrons bounced off the atoms' electrons in patterns that indicate that the atoms have varying shapes. The nuclei of iron atoms are surrounded by a cloud of electrons...
Racing Particles. Since a good source of electrons is atom bombs, which give off vast swarms of them, military authorities realized quickly that rocket-borne atom bombs, exploded at the proper altitude over the proper part of the earth, would test peaceful magnetic theories while giving answers to military problems. e.g., the possible use of atomic charges exploded above the atmosphere as a defense against ballistic missiles. When an atom bomb explodes in the atmosphere, its fireball stops expanding when its pressure falls to that of the air around it; in the vacuum above the atmosphere, the fireball expands indefinitely...