It could all cascade in a self-sustained “chain” process. Physicist Leo Szilard made an important realization: if fission emits neutrons, and neutrons can induce fission, then neutrons from the fission of one nucleus could cause the fission of another nucleus. The release of these findings to the academic community immediately inspired many nuclear scientists to investigate the nuclear fission process further. This finding at the dawn of World War II was the start of a scientific and military race to understand and use this new atomic source of power. More importantly, this fission process releases huge amounts of energy. Meitner and Frisch were able to provide an explanation for what he saw that would revolutionize the field of nuclear physics: A uranium nucleus could split in half-or fission, as they called it-producing two new nuclei, called fission fragments. When bombarding uranium with neutrons, Hahn had made some surprising observations that went against everything known at the time about the dense cores of atoms-their nuclei. Over Christmas vacation in 1938, physicists Lise Meitner and Otto Frisch received puzzling scientific news in a private letter from nuclear chemist Otto Hahn. The following essay is reprinted with permission from The Conversation, an online publication covering the latest research.
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