The consequences and anxieties that remain after 50 years of nuclear fission demand that mankind act with reason and conscience to maintain peace. Few modern discoveries have influenced mankind so rapidly and so profoundly as has nuclear fission, and few have had such an intricate history. The momentous discovery must be considered inevitable the great tragedy was that Germany started World War II just at the time when the possibility of nuclear chain reactions and bombs became known. It is, therefore, instructive also to discuss how fission was not discovered. This review deals with the eminent scientists involved, their successes, errors and disappointments, and the unexpected insights which occurred on the paths and detours of scientific research. The physics of the fission process was understood two weeks later after a few months, neutron multiplication was found to be probable. Painstaking experiments by chemists left no doubt on 17 December 1938 that barium was produced by these irradiations: the neutrons had split some uranium nuclei. Strassmann1 have discovered a new type of nuclear reaction, the splitting into two smaller nuclei of the nuclei of uranium and thorium under. On learning of the nuclear fission discovery, Fermi, working with Szilard, immediately added a new hypothesis to his list. Fusion combines smaller, stable elements together, whereas fission separates larger. Starting in 1934, neutron irradiation of uranium produced radioactive substances erroneously attributed to transuranium elements but with confusing properties. The process that defined nuclear power (Credit: Plan A) In contrast, nuclear fusion is a much different process. The radiochemists Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann were bombarding elements with neutrons in their Berlin laboratory when they made an unexpected discovery. Exposure of beryllium to alpha rays yielded neutrons, first detected in 1932. In 1911 studies with alpha rays from radioactive decay led to the unexpected discovery of the atomic nucleus. Its radioactive character was first demonstrated in 1896 and two years later radium was extracted from uranium minerals. His most spectacular discovery came at the end of 1938.
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