Word: fissioning
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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General Destruction. The still-theoretical neutron bomb will use a "pure-fusion" reaction, a third generation in nuclear explosions. In old-fashioned fission (Abomb) explosions, nuclei of uranium or plutonium split roughly in half, and the big, heavy fragments are shoved apart by powerful electrical forces. Almost at once they collide with other nuclei, with other materials in the bomb and with the surrounding air. The collisions slow the nuclei down and turn their original energy into heat. The result is a high-temperature fireball that sears its surroundings with heat radiation and expands so violently that it generates...
...fission-fusion (H-bomb) explosions, a large part of the released energy appears in the form of high-speed neutrons. Since the neutrons are small and have no electric charge to make atoms repel them, they can penetrate a great deal of matter. So they escape from the fireball and travel a mile or more through the air. They are deadly killers, but existing H-bombs, which are bulky and require fission detonators, generate so much heat and blast that the neutrons they manufacture are lost in the general destruction...
High Temperature. If a small, pure-fusion bomb could be built to work with out a fission detonator, theorists believe that it would send its neutrons farther than the destructive reach of its heat or blast. Starting with 14 MEV (million electron volts) of energy, the neutrons would traverse about a half-mile of air and still have enough punch to kill humans protected by several feet of earth or concrete. There would be blast and heat too, but if the N-bomb was just the right size and was exploded at just the right height above the ground...
...such pure-fusion (neutron) bombs be built? As Senator Dodd remarked, scientists will not say that the job is impossible (TIME, Feb. 10). But nearly all agree that it is extremely difficult. Since N-bombs cannot have fission detonators and still act like N-bombs, some other detonator must be found that can raise the temperature of the fusion ingredients to some 1,000,000° C. so that they can start to react. So far, no chemical explosive or other nonfission detonator has remotely approached this temperature. Until something comes near this goal, there is little point in demanding...
...this tolerant teaching as it was for the disciples. Quirks of custom and filigrees of doctrine, thunderbolts of power politics and showers of private revelations, have split and fissured the masonry of the church time and again throughout the centuries. The Protestant Reformation triggered a chain reaction of Christian fission that reached its explosive peak in the New World; in 1900 the U.S. had no fewer than 250 different kinds of Christianity...