Word: thermonuclear
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...cryptic, 20-word sentence, the Atomic Energy Commission and the Defense Department last week gave a progress report on the H-bomb. Said a joint press release: recent "successful" atomic tests at Eniwetok "included experiments contributing to thermonuclear weapons research...
Millions of Degrees. According to Perón's high-sounding claims, Richter and his assistants "worked on the basis of thermonuclear reactions, which are identical with those whereby the sun releases atomic energy ... It was necessary to have enormous temperatures of millions of degrees ... To avoid catastrophic explosions, it was necessary to find processes whereby it would be possible to control thermonuclear reactions in a chain. That objective, almost unattainable, was reached...
...other possibility. To give the temperature of a substance is merely a handy way of reporting the average velocity of its molecules or atoms. At temperatures up in the millions of degrees, atoms speed fast enough to smash other atoms, sometimes making them take part in energy-yielding "thermonuclear reactions." This is what happens...
...also happens when atoms are given electrical charges and pushed to enormous velocity by cyclotrons or other "particle accelerators." So Richter may have gotten his "high temperatures" and "thermonuclear reactions" merely by the old trick of accelerating charged particles. Just after Perón's first announcement, Richter hinted that an article by British Physicist Sir John Cockcroft told what line he was following. Cockcroft described how, in 1932, he shot protons against a lithium target and turned the lithium into helium plus energy...
...Argentina," explained Perón, had decided that it was not "worth the trouble to copy nuclear fission." Instead, "contrary to what was done in foreign experiments, Argentine technicians worked on the basis of thermonuclear reactions, which are identical with those whereby the sun releases atomic energy." The successful experiment had been conducted at the government atomic plant on Huemul Island, in the Andean lake of Nahuel Huapi, some 900 miles southwest of Buenos Aires. It required neither uranium nor plutonium. "With the seriousness and veracity which is my custom," Perón assured his people that his cut-rate...