Word: deuterium
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DIED. Harold Urey, 87, Nobel-prizewinning chemist whose 1931 discovery with two colleagues of the heavy form of hydrogen called deuterium helped usher in the nuclear age and led to the development of the hydrogen bomb; of a heart attack; in La Jolla, Calif. An Indiana clergyman's son who remained a lifelong critic of military force, Urey was an innovative researcher in a wide range of scientific fields. He was considered the father of modern lunar science for his speculations about the moon's geology. During World War II his work in separating the heavy or isotope...
Unlike rockets, missiles launched by railguns would not leave fiery, polluting exhausts detectable by satellite. In a forthcoming issue, Physics Today reports that some scientists think that railguns, firing a stream of high-velocity particles at a target of deuterium and tritium, may offer the best way yet of achieving controlled fusion, a key energy hope for the future. Perhaps the most far-reaching application involves the space colonization ideas of Princeton Physicist Gerard O'Neill. He and some colleagues at M.I.T. are already building models of kindred electromagnetic launchers that they believe could be assembled on the moon...
...catch these particles, the physicists placed a sealed container of deuterium, or heavy water, 11.2 meters (37 ft.) from the reactor. Immersed in the liquid were ten helium-filled tubes wired to an external oscilloscope. The detection apparatus was shielded in lead and cadmium cylinders and a foot-thick "pot" to block everything but neutrinos. As the particles barreled through the heavy water, some scored bull's-eye hits on the nuclei of its hydrogen atoms, which contain an extra neutron. These collisions produced other particles, including more neutrons that struck the helium-filled tubes and registered...
...milliseconds, the doughnut-shaped device known as the Princeton Large Torus held a plasma of hydrogen and deuterium in a strong magnetic field at a temperature of 60 million degrees centigrade-four times higher than the sun's own internal heat and better than twice the mark set at Princeton last December. Equally important, feared instabilities at that temperature did not occur, making the physicists more confident than ever that they will be able to demonstrate the scientific feasibility of fusion by reaching the magical break-even point: when as much energy comes out of a reaction as goes...
DIED. Henri Moureu, 79, French scientist who in World War II helped to frustrate Nazi efforts to make an atom bomb and later saved Paris from rocketing; in Pau, France. Assigned in 1940 to guard France's secret reserve of deuterium oxide (heavy water), Moureu hid it in a prison cell, then smuggled it to England. In 1944, when the Germans unveiled V-2 rockets, Moureu calculated their size and working principles. He also helped pin point launching sites targeted on Paris, which were destroyed by U.S. bombers...