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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.
Furthermore the Germans were hampered by having driven many top physicists out of the country with their anti-Semitic policies, and also by drafting other boffins into the army to fight as ordinary soldiers.
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An irradiated lead refrigerator with the body of the legendary tomb raider Indiana Jones was also discovered.
There's been a lot of controversy over whether Heisenberg deliberately sabotaged the Nazi bomb-making or whether he tried to help but was incompetent or whether the failure was due to factors beyond Heisenberg. Although I have not read the book, I've been told that Paul Rose's book "Heisenberg and the Nazi Atomic Bomb Project" presents a strong case that Heisenberg tried his hardest to assist the Nazi regime in the building of the atom bomb.
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 issue of Heisenberg, and any theoretical physicist being treated like a pariah (and thus dooming Nazi Germany's atom bomb program) is very instructive. The Nazi's made a political and ideological decision, to wit:
They would then cast about trying to find every white atheist physicist who had doubts about 20th century physics, and then give them huge grants, fat think tank jobs, and would promote their work to the moon and back. On the other hand they would work to suppress the contributions of people like Lise Meitner, who used the 'Jewish physics' to provide them with proof of the first lab fission reaction.
I suppose there's some sort of argument pro or con of climate change in this... exercise for the reader.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
2080: "Toldja Iraq had WMD's"
Table-ized A.I.
There's no such thing as a *new* Dirk Pitt novel, they all have roughly the same plot.
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
There is a truly excellent book, "Hitler's Uranium Club" which documents what the Germans themselves said about their efforts. It is edited by Jeremy Bernstein. It is a collection of transcriptions of conversations among the leading German scientists (Heisenberg, Laue, etc., not all of whom were actually doing nuclear physics), who were captured lat in the war and transferred to Farm Hall in England. They were recorded secretly, so what is said is very candid.
Anyone interested in this history should definitely read the book. The conversations run the gamut from very technical, to various fights over social issues.
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
The Nazis were more than just superficially Christian, most of them were very Christian, and had the overt support of the leadership of both the two main Christinan churches in Germany at the time (Catholic and Lutheren), for both the party in general and the policy of exterminating the Jews in particular.
The reason so many people believe the Nazis were athiests is because of a couple of quotes taken out of context, and because the Catholic church has spared no expense (or Jesuit historian) rewriting history and glossing over their own involvement in both the policies and the atrocities. Indeed, they've even managed to gloss over the fact that Hitler was quite devoutly Catholic (and not particularly out of character in his behaviour--just look at how Columbus treated the natives of the West Indies, or Cortez the Mayans and Aztecs, or...the list goes on, ad nauseum, all with the blessing, both tacit and overt, of the Catholic Christian authorities).
This actually becomes more obviuos when you look at the longer history of Catholic pogroms and inquisitions against the Jews that litter the history of Europe. The Nazi holocaust is merely the latest and most notorious. What a coup, to help organise and support such a massive Christian pogrom against a people, then send out your cadres of revisionist "historians" to recharacterise those responsible not as fellow Christians, but as Athiests...about the only group who wouldn't be inclined to support, much less lead, a pogrom against a population simply because their ancesters are rumourted to have cricified one of their deities two thousand years earlier.
Indeed, as you note, the Nazis came after Athiests with much the same ferver as todays Teabaggers, Truthers, and other right-wing zealots. Some things never change.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
The fact this can be traced to production batches at Joachimstal during the war is interesting for the following reason: it was a mine incapable of supporting a nuclear weapon program.
Joachimstal (Jachymov today) is an ancient and famous mining district (others have noted here that Thaler == Dollar originated from its name) and due to radon gas in its mine is also the earliest recorded incidences of death from occupational radiation exposure - - - lung cancer was a common cause of death of underground miners from the 16th century onward. It was also a prominent source of material for the discovery of radiation and radioactive elements.
But it could only produce a few tens of tons of uranium annually! Something like a 1000 tons of uranium was needed to support an effective nuclear weapons program.
Germany had however a couple of thousand tons of already mined and processed ore from the Belgian Congo, captured at the outset of the war. This material was perfect for a nuclear weapons program - if it had one. This material was captured by the U.S. at the end of the war unused. A couple of thousand tons of ore from this same mine and shipped to the U.S. before the war in fact powered the Manhattan Project through most of its wartime operations.
That Germany was still relying on old pre-war supply arrangements through Joamchimstal to obtain research uranium is very interesting. It is another manifestation of the failure to create a real weapons program.
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