Nuclear fission was discovered in December 1938 by physicists Lise Meitner and Otto Robert Frisch and chemists Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann. Marie Curie, who later became a Nobel Laureate, was the first to discover the existence of the elements 93 and 94, as well as other elements such as gadolinium and neptunium. In 1998, the discovery was made of the neutron by James Chadwick in 1932, which created a new means of nuclear transmutation. The neutron was used to create the first nuclear weapons, the first of which was the thermonuclear warhead, which was detonated in Nagasaki, Japan.
About Discovery of nuclear fission in brief
Nuclear fission was discovered in December 1938 by physicists Lise Meitner and Otto Robert Frisch and chemists Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann. Fission is a nuclear reaction or radioactive decay process in which the nucleus of an atom splits into two or more smaller, lighter nuclei. The fission process often produces gamma rays and releases a very large amount of energy, even by the energetic standards of radioactive decay. The discovery that a nuclear chain reaction was possible led to the development of nuclear power and nuclear weapons. In the last years of the 19th century, scientists frequently experimented with the cathode-ray tube, which by then had become a standard piece of laboratory equipment. Wilhelm Röntgen had a screen coated with barium platinocyanide that would fluoresce when exposed to cathode rays. Henri Becquerel was experimenting with fluorescent uranium salts, and wondered if they too might produce X-rays. On 1 March 1896 he discovered that they did indeed produce rays, but of a different kind, and even when the uranium salt was kept in a dark drawer, it made an intense image on an X-ray plate, indicating that the rays from it did not require an external energy source. Along with Pierre Curie and Gustave Bavet, she gave the phenomenon the name “radioactivity” along with thorium in April 1898. She also found them in thorium-bearing ore-blende in Bémont, which she then tested for signs of radioactivity in as many elements and minerals as she could find.
Marie Curie, who later became a Nobel Laureate, was the first to discover the existence of the elements 93 and 94, as well as other elements such as gadolinium and neptunium. Her work paved the way for the discovery of the real elements 93 and 94, for theiscovery of fission in other elements, and for the determination of the role of the uranium-235 isotope in that of uranium. In 1998, the discovery was made of the neutron by James Chadwick in 1932, which created a new means of nuclear transmutation. The neutron was used to create the first nuclear weapons, the first of which was the thermonuclear warhead, which was detonated in Nagasaki, Japan, in 1998. The first nuclear bombs were also made in 1998, and the first atomic bombs were detonated in Hiroshima, Japan in 1999. The bombs were the first ever to be fitted with the fission initiator, a device known as the fissile material, which has been used to make nuclear weapons since the 1950s. The Fermi-Fermi experiment in 1940s created new elements with 93 and 93 protons, which his group dubbed ausonium and hesperium. Enrico FermI won the 1938 Nobel Prize in Physics for his demonstration of new radioactive elements produced by neutron irradiation, and his related discovery of nuclear reactions brought about by slow neutrons. After much hard work and many discoveries, the discoverers of the most stable isotope of protactinium determined that what they were observing was fission.
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