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Lost Nazi Uranium Found In a Dutch Scrapyard
colin_faber writes "Lewis Page of the Register is reporting that forensic nuclear scientists at the European Commission's Joint Research Centre traced the two pieces of metal found in a Dutch scrapyard — described as a cube and a plate — back to their exact origins and dates. Apparently both came from ores extracted at the 'Joachimsthal' mine in what is now the Czech Republic from the former Nazi nuclear-weapons programme of the 1940s." The article runs through the roadblocks that, unknown to the Allies, the Nazi regime erected against their possible success in any nuclear bomb development during the war.
Fun trivia: Joachimsthal mine is where we get the modern word "dollar." Silver extracted from this mine was minted to attest its purity and the coin thus produced was called a "thaler." TH is a relatively unusual consonant sound in many languages, and corrupts to D in romance languages like French, and here we are.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
The article is about Germany trying to build an atomic bomb during WWII. Jewish scientists who fled Germany around that time include Einstein (E=mc^2, the basis for atomic bombs), Teller (father of the hydrogen bomb), Bloch (worked with neutrons, worked on the Manhattan project), Wigner (told Roosevelt about Nazi bomb plans, worked on the Manhattan project), Szilard (same as Bloch, one of the people who first conceived the a-bomb) and Frisch (same as Szilard).
Do you suppose some of those guys might have been kind of useful to a German atomic weapons program?
Atheist? Perhaps non-Jewish, but I've never heard of the Nazi's having an inclination to promote a person *because* they were atheist, as opposed to Protestant or Catholic.
The Nazi's were at least superficially Christian and opposed atheism:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Hitler's_religious_views#Hitler.27s_reaction_to_atheism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_Nazi_Germany
Or perhaps you mistyped and mean Aryan.
In case any of you Americans were wondering what a Boffin is, it is a scientist. Here is a quote from wikipedia,
"In the slang of the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, India and South Africa, boffins are scientists, medical doctors, engineers, and other people engaged in technical or scientific research.
The word 'boffin' (or 'boff'—often as an insult[1]) can also be used to refer to any particularly clever person. The closest American equivalent is "egghead"."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boffin
Einstein did many things, and yes his formula was instrumental in predicting the power that a nuclear explosion would have (and yes - he miscalculated the first time, everyone did). However his contribution to the atomic bomb was limited to the suggestion that "matter should be convertible into energy". Not much more than that sentence. Of course, that sentence was the reason a lot of scientists re-examined the properties of known radioactive materials, leading to :
The direct basis for atomic bombs, for a quick neutron-cascade reaction in enriched uranium, laid by these scientists :
Otto Hahn (German, Nazi)
Fritz Strassman (German, most likely also a Nazi)
Lise Meitner, Jewish, who initially received a "special exception" from the Nazi regime for her work, and protection from a thoroughly Nazi university in Austria, but then was forced to flee anyway
But this was only fission itself, and the suggestions that if somehow large amounts of U-235 were used with cadmium-enriched water between them that a "large amount" of energy would be released. This release of energy was not yet a bomb, it is what we call today a "meltdown". Dangerous, very hot, and poisonous, but nowhere near an atomic explosion. Niels Bohr calculated exactly how much energy a meltdown would produce : 200 million electron-volts PER split atom. The principle that guides bomb development was still missing 2 concepts : enrichment and the discovery of "critical mass".
Incidentally, Otto Hahn was part of the nazi nuclear weapon development program (in fact he was the one that suggested the Nazi's start one). Enrichment was eventually mostly perfected by Otto Hahn, in parallel with the enrichment accomplishments in the Manhattan program.
Critical mass, the actual direct cause for an explosion (nazi weaponization of nuclear power at that point was mostly focused on e.g. launching bombs with it, or producing oil with it, that sort of stuff), was discovered by Francis Perrin.
Then, in 1939, all elements to produce a working atomic bomb were in place. Eventually, while Otto Hahn has in fact drawn up plans that would have worked before the Americans had a working plan, the Americans were the first to get a working atomic bomb in July 1945, a month after the fall of the third reich.
Your post misses the mark: Nazis were not opposed to Christian scientists. They were against Jewish scientists. Against as in, first they marginalized them, made it difficult for them to work, then to find a job and finally (if the scientists and their family were stil residing in Germany or a Nazi-occupied country) deported to a concentration camp and gassed.
Germany COULD have had a nuclear weapon before the allies, if only they didn't engage in their futile/counterproductive policy of extermination, genocde and racial discrimination against Jews. Scientists like Szilard (father of nuclear fission) would have stayed in Germany instead of moving to the USA where they then worked on the Manhattan project.
And a note at the end: had the Nazis had a nuclear weapon, it would have changed the course of history. They didn't necessarily need more than one, either: just blow up one major USSR city (say, Moscow) and watch the Eastern front fold up and a truce being signed.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
If you take 2 H and make an He, the mass of the products does not equal that of the reactants. Some mass is lost through the process and is converted into energy which is what gives the bomb is power. It's also what makes the Sun hot as well.
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I didn't say ANY of them were FROM Germany.
Teller left Hungary when he was 18 and completed his undergraduate and graduate training in Germany. Wigner was also educated in Germany and worked there until he moved to the US, around the same time the Nazis were gaining power. Szilard also did much of his training in Germany and worked there for some time before fleeing the Nazis.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Teller
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugene_Wigner
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leó_Szilárd