Word: nuclear
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Thorium is not itself a chain-reacting substance or "nuclear fuel" like plutonium or U-235, but when placed in a pile with U-235 it yields a third kind of fuel known as U-233. So far as is known, only theoretical work has been done on U-233. Last year, however, Canada announced that she would explore thorium's possibilities at the big Chalk River project in Ontario (TIME...
...British pointed out that they could not give orders to Travancore's Maharaja, an independent ruler. The handsome, enlightened, 34-year-old Maharaja, who in 1937 established a university for technological research, has now said that he wants to build thorium refining plants, and perhaps even experiment with nuclear fission, in Travancore. That was a reminder that the great powers had no permanent monopoly on the atom...
Conspicuously absent among the scientists honored were any connected with the atomic bomb, though many theoretical nuclear physicists had been en-Nobeled before. There might be a historical reason. In his will (1896), Alfred Nobel endowed the famous prizes (value of each this year: $34,000) as penance for inventing dynamite. It might be embarrassing now to single out the developers of atomic "super-dynamite." Prizewinners...
Physics. To non-nuclear Professor Percy Williams Bridgman of Harvard, 64, authority on high-pressure phenomena. He proved that nearly all substances change profoundly if squeezed hard enough. Water existed as ice in Bridgman's apparatus, even when its temperature was above the normal boiling point. Soft and slippery graphite (under 1,500,000 pounds of pressure per square inch) gets hard enough to make a dent in steel...
Last week the War Department announced that it would finance a $20,000,000 nuclear research laboratory at "The Knolls," near Schenectady, N.Y. Complete with "uranium reactor," powerful atom smashers, a "hot lab" and other baleful equipment, it would work in close cooperation with General Electric Co.'s great new research laboratory, now under construction. Principal objective: atomic power for peaceful purposes...