Word: bombe
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1940-1949
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...America's own U.S. military machine, Forrestal said it badly needed cranking up. True, the U.S. did hold a "fair margin of superiority" on virtually every technical weapon. But even the atom bomb was neither sufficient to prevent attack, nor enough to insure victory after attack. Any war would require the best combined efforts of the Army, Navy and Air Force. And Jim Forrestal reported frankly that, after 15 months of "unification," they were a long way from being unified...
Israelis threatened to bomb Cairo in retaliation. Before they got around to it, the Jewish part of Jerusalem suffered its first air raid in six months...
...Dropping bombs from a satellite would present problems. Ordinary bombs released from the bomb bay would merely follow along the orbit like smaller satellites. They would have to be shot downward to increase their falling rate and allow them to catch up with the curving surface of the earth. Shooting them backward would have a similar effect. If they were shot backward at a speed equal to the satellite's forward speed on its orbit, they would stand still in space for an instant. Then they would fall vertically toward the earth. The whole satellite could be brought down...
...variable. The "novae" flash into sudden brilliance and then fade back to dimness. Others wax & wane regularly every few days. In a letter to Britain's Nature magazine, D. Stanley-Jones suggests that both types of uneasy stars may be natural versions of the man-made atomic bomb...
...atomic bomb has two "subcritical masses" of plutonium or uranium 235. When the two masses are far away from each other, nothing happens. The neutrons generated spontaneously within each piece escape so rapidly through the surface that a chain reaction cannot get started. But when the two pieces are brought close together, the neutrons stay in the uranium longer. By splitting uranium atoms and thus releasing more neutrons, they start a nuclear chain reaction which does not stop until the explosion has scattered the fissionable material...