Word: fissioning
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...interaction of variables. Rand uses the "Delphi" method, in which a wide range of experts are queried and re-queried for their forecasts, arriving finally at a near-consensus. Prognosticators concede that the timing and nature of pure inventions or basic breakthroughs-such as the achievement of atomic fission-are not predictable. In many cases, they must still rely on "imaginings...
...heat radiation into space. The germanium-silicon combination is "thermoelectric," it changes heat to electricity, and the difference between the two temperatures caused a faint current to flow. That current added up to about 650 watts-hardly enough to run a household toaster-but it was the first fission energy to be generated in space. Hitched to a more efficient converter, said the AEC, the same reactor could generate "some tens of kilowatts...
Breathing, too, is growing steadily more perilous. Said Johnson: "This generation has altered the composition of the atmosphere on a global scale," by gas, coal and oil fumes as well as by nuclear fission. The 1966 budget under the Clean Air Act will be $24 million-almost double what it was when the law was enacted two years ago. Even so, the President feels that the act needs strengthening to permit the Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare "to investigate potential air-pollution problems before pollution happens...
Bacteria normally multiply by sexless fission-they simply split in two. Still, scientists believe that some kinds of bacteria occasionally manage a kind of sexual mating. It is almost impossible to catch them in the act, though, because they have no special sex organs, and often when they cling together it is not for love. But at least one kind of microscopic bug has a sex life with a difference. Professors Pavel Nemec and Vojtech Bystricky of the Slovak Polytechnical University in Bratislava report that the Caulobacter, a harmless bacterium found in soil, possesses a multi-purpose organ that...
Implosion. Another nugget of information in the AEC report was word that the Chinese depended on an implosion (inward-striking detonation) of chemicals to compress their U-235 and make it fission. Such a device is more effective than shooting two chunks of fissionable material toward each other in an apparatus like a gun barrel, as was done in the U.S. bomb exploded over Hiroshima. The U.S. also used the implosion method in its earliest nuclear weapons. Although a surprising number of commentators assumed that use of implosion showed advanced skill by the Chinese, the AEC did not agree...