Word: chain
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Problems of Management. Under Dr. Pitzer's control will come the chain of laboratories which the AEC is building throughout the country. Much of his work will be top-secret, concerned with atom bombs and other nuclear weapons. An even greater responsibility of Pitzer's will be to make the atom serve-as well as threaten-civilization...
...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...
Variable stars, says Stanley-Jones, may work the same way. When the star is in ai normal quiescent condition, its heavy fissionable atoms are too far apart for a chain reaction to get started. Being heavy, they sink gradually toward the center of the star. As they sink, they approach one another. When they get close enough, a chain reaction is set off. Its heat and radiation make the star expand until the fissionable materials in it are too far apart to react any more...
...believe that the flowing of the contradictions means, not the classical revolutions, but war first, followed by revolutions. Says Historicus: "In Stalin's thinking, the importance of war as a midwife of revolution can scarcely be exaggerated." War, Stalin says, develops a "weak link" in the imperialist-capitalist chain...
...thin chain of islands picketing the vast Red-dominated land mass of Asia, Douglas MacArthur stood overwhelmingly outgunned, outmanned, and out-planed by actual and potential Soviet power. In every category of military strength (except the atomic bomb), the Soviet Union, stretching from the Bering Strait to Vladivostok and deep inland, held at least a ten-to-one superiority. Reported Douglas MacArthur: the time to prepare is now. He asked immediately for six divisions, hundreds of aircraft and increased naval forces...