Word: fermi
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Shortly after dinner one evening last week, Physicist John A. Simpson got an important message from the University of Chicago's Enrico Fermi Institute: the alarm bell on the cosmic ray monitoring device in Simpson's office was ringing. When he got to his office, Simpson discovered that cosmic rays were bombarding the earth at a phenomenal rate of 3,000 per minute (normal rate for the area: 200 per minute). The activity, noted by observatories around the world, followed by less than 30 minutes a giant solar flare. It was the strongest indication so far that cosmic...
...neutrons, turned into Element 99 with 99 protons and 154 neutrons. To form Element 100 (100 protons and 155 neutrons), the U-238 captured 17 neutrons and lost eight beta particles. The scientists suggested that Element 99 be named einsteinium, after Albert Einstein, and Element 100 fermium, after Enrico Fermi...
...stars; the required heat seemed unattainable. In 1938 Otto Hahn and Lise Meitner discovered nuclear fission, and their discovery led directly to the Abomb. And fission, with its intense release of energy, also suggested that conditions could be created under which thermonuclear reactions might occur. The late Enrico Fermi in 1942 suggested to Teller that fission could be used to start thermonuclear reaction in deuterium (heavy hydrogen). "After a few weeks of hard thought," Teller recalls, "I decided that deuterium could not be ignited by atomic bombs...
...Alamos was established under the direction of Oppenheimer, to whom Teller gives unstinted credit for pushing A-bomb development "in time to have an influence upon the war." But Oppenheimer, Fermi and others did not lose sight of thermonuclear possibilities...
...these accomplishments, Kimpton realizes that the University of Chicago has lost much of the experimental glamour of the Hutchins era. Nor has he been able to replace such men as Physicist Enrico Fermi, who died last November, Psychologist Louis Thurstone and Sociologist Ernest Burgess, who retired, or Chemist Harrison Brown, Geologist F. J. Pettijohn and Physiologist Ralph Gerard, all of whom have gone elsewhere. Will Chicago ever again become as exciting a place as it used to be? The danger is, says Kimpton, "that you get so used to thinking in terms of retrenchment that you lose any imaginative flair...