ياسر البحرى وتهمه الاغتصاب للفتيات

10 Things You Didn't Know About Enrico Fermi

Enrico Fermi was an Italian (later naturalized American) physicist and the creator of the world's first nuclear reactor, the Chicago Pile-1. He has been called the "architect of the nuclear age and the "architect of the atomic bomb He was one of very few physicists to excel in both theoretical physics and experimental physics. Fermi was awarded the 1938 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on induced radioactivity by neutron bombardment and for the discovery of transuranium elements. With his colleagues, Fermi filed several patents related to the use of nuclear power, all of which were taken over by the US government. He made significant contributions to the development of statistical mechanics, quantum theory, and nuclear and particle physics.

Early Life

Born December 8, 1900 in Mantua, Italy, Enrico Fermi was the son of middle-class parents, who encouraged him to pursue scientific pursuits, rather than follow the traditional career path of a lawyer. He studied at the local Jesuit college before receiving a PhD in physics from the University of Padua in 1922. Career In 1923, Fermi began working at the University of Rome as an assistant to the prominent Italian physicist Odoardo Beccari, where he spent most of his time developing a theory that would predict the maximum temperature that an atom of deuterium (heavy hydrogen) could attain. It was Beccari who taught Fermi how to use atomic absorption spectroscopy to examine the spectra of deuterium.

Experiments with radiation

Fermi, with his wife Margot (later Margot Fermi) was an amateur radio operator and in the 1930s he made contact with physicist Enrico Fermi in Rome. The two made a number of technical experiments, but it was when they tuned into each other's radiophones that they really got started. Fermi and his wife Margot. Their son was curious about radio waves and became convinced that they were the same waves that could be used to transmit energy. The experiment involved Fermi inserting tiny bits of uranium into the mouths of pigeons and then attaching "pigeon telephones" to the birds' necks. The birds were then set loose in a long hallway. As the birds turned and flew down the hallway, they would be picked up and the transmission transmitted to Fermi's radiophone.

The rise of the atomic bomb

Enrico Fermi with Lady Bardac at the CERN Enrico Fermi’s next big project, the Chicago Pile-1 (CP-1), a 32-centimetre-high pile of copper scrap, built in the basement of the University of Chicago's physics laboratory, was completed in November 1933. In 1934, work began on the electro-turbo-boosted neutron source (ETBN), intended to be the world’s first neutrino detector. The experiments were carried out in November 1934, and the recorded detection of neutrinos was credited to Fermi and his team. In May 1935, the CP-1 was briefly shut down after an attempt to remove the nuclear reactor core resulted in overheating. The reactor was allowed to cool down for a month, and was restarted with added boron.

The Manhattan Project

In 1939, Adolf Hitler announced Germany's intention to build a nuclear weapon. Aware of the dangers of the new weapon, Fermi immediately proposed a nuclear chain reaction. In the late 1930s, Fermi collaborated with the National Bureau of Standards and the University of Chicago's physics department to perfect his bomb designs and to create a nuclear reactor design. On January 3, 1940, he proposed the use of a uranium bomb. He noted that if a team of scientists from the University of Chicago were to develop a thermonuclear bomb, it could be deployed by a team of scientists from Los Alamos, New Mexico, or Chicago. Fermi's Chicago Pile-1 In June of 1941, the government of the United States formed the Manhattan Project, a secret military project to develop the first atomic bomb.

The Nobel Prize

On June 14, 1938, Fermi, with his colleague Leó Szilárd, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for his discovery of nuclear fission. Before this, no one was aware that atoms are broken down into smaller pieces of a nucleus. This discovery explained the nuclear chain reaction. He later received the Compton-Rosen Prize for this discovery in 1950. There was a lot of controversy surrounding his receipt of the Nobel Prize. At the time, the acceptance of a scientist's work for prizes was quite subjective. When Stalin made the award to Fermi, he refused to accept it. Szilárd was awarded the 1954 Nobel Prize in Physics. In 1954, Szilárd presented Fermi with the Szilárd medal from the American Nuclear Society.

The end of World War II

At the close of World War II, Fermi was in temporary exile from Germany and Italy. In March 1945, he was asked to come to the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos, New Mexico, to assist in the investigation of a new type of nuclear fission reactor. In December 1945, Fermi organized the Los Alamos Laboratory and served as its first head until July 1949, when he was replaced by George B. Pegram. While at Los Alamos, Fermi and others discovered the critical mass for uranium-235, which demonstrated the existence of a nuclear chain reaction. The Los Alamos Laboratory also built the first nuclear reactor in the world, the Chicago Pile-1, using a design similar to that of the Labradorian.

Conclusion

"The Fermi paradox represents a paradox, first, of why we did not find intelligent life out there when we had the technology to do so. But the other, deeper paradox is that intelligent life doesn't have to have technology, and it certainly doesn't need any kind of advanced technology. As a species we have, on average, about a hundred thousand species a year becoming extinct, so that probably represents half the evolutionary process of the planet, so we are in an evolutionary arms race, in which survival is our main drive, but in the end our survival could be rooted in our sense of justice, in the concept of justice in our own societies, our sense of taking care of one another, in the idea that we are not going to destroy each other.