Word: tritium
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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ATLANTIC CITY, N.J., April 17--Tritium, an ingredient of the fearsome H-bomb, offers new humanitarian aid as a sleuth in the quest for the cause of cancer...
...Ellen Borenfreund, Herbert S. Rosenkranz and Aaron Bendich said tritium now offers a new and improved method for the radioactive "tagging" or labelling of the genetic material of cells and viruses so scientists can trace its activity, sight unseen...
...toward the same simple purpose: to heat gaseous deuterium (heavy hydrogen) as hot as possible and confine it in a small space as long as possible. When deuterium atoms get hot enough, they hit each other so hard that they "fuse," forming helium 3 (and a neutron) or tritium (and a proton), and give off energy. This process happens explosively in H-bombs, but to control the reaction, the deuterium must be confined. Since ordinary, solid walls cannot hold the gas at the necessary temperature of many million degrees, fusion reactors use walls of magnetic force. They are strong...
Luis Walter Alvarez, 46, sports-jacketed professor of physics and associate director of the University of California's Radiation Laboratory, has been called the "prize wild-idea man." Some prized wild ideas: isolation of tritium (used in thermonuclear weapons) and, with a graduate student, the discovery of helium 3 (1939); the universally used radar-operated Ground-Controlled Approach System for blind-flying aircraft (1942); a method of producing nuclear reaction without the presence of uranium or million-degree heat (1956). Born in San Francisco, the son of onetime Teacher and Mayo Clinic Physician (and now medical columnist) Walter Alvarez...
Atomic Light. A radioactive flashlight is being sold by Boston's New England Nuclear Corp. The small metal cylinder (about i in. in diameter, 1½ in. long) has a plastic lens at one end, contains a long-lasting tritium "battery" produced at Oak Ridge. It will take twelve years for 'the light to dimmish 50%. Though its radioactivity is low, only persons licensed by the AEC can buy it, but the maker estimates that when the instrument is made available to the public the price will be about...