Posts Tagged ‘nuclear arms’
“A mouse never entrusts his life to only one hole”*…
… Well, our earth is riddled with them. And as our old friend Randall Munroe at xkcd reminds us, some of them are very deep…
“Holes”
Via Jason Kottke, who reminds us that “Explain xkcd has more info on each of the various holes, including the truly bonkers Cave of Crystals in Mexico” (and explanatory background on other xkcd posts as well…)
* Plautus
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As we spelunk, we might recall that it was on this date in 1962 that the U.S. military detonated Little Feller I, a tactical nuclear weapon at the Nevada Test Site as part of Operation Sunbeam. It was the last near-ground atmospheric nuclear detonation conducted by the United States. The high-altitude Fishbowl tests concluded in November of1962 with a detonation at around 69,000 feet altitude. Thereafter, in accordance with the 1963 Partial Test Ban Treaty, tests were conducted underground… more holes.
“Everyone knows Newton as the great scientist. Few remember that he spent half his life muddling with alchemy, looking for the philosopher’s stone. That was the pebble by the seashore he really wanted to find”*…
Alchemist Heating a Pot, by David Teniers the Younger (1610 – 1690
Alchemy is one of the most curious subjects in the history of science–it evokes both method and magic in popular imagination. Teniers brilliantly juxtaposes light and shadow in his paintings, leaving the viewer unsure just how illuminating alchemy really is.
Alchemy was practiced in Europe as early as the 1300s and, by the seventeenth century, it had reached in zenith. It was a precursor to modern chemistry, and the methods and instruments that are historically tied to alchemy had a significant impact on the development of scientific tools. (As a historical note, in the seventeenth century, alchemy and chemistry were extremely fluid scientific practices; many contemporary historians of science opt to refer to the science as chymistry to connote the mutability of the two practices.)
At its very core, alchemy focused on the notion of transmutation–the ability of one element to morph into another, especially the ability to turn elements into gold. (If Rumpelstiltskin had only been so lucky!) In order to understand elements on their most basic level—in order to extrapolate how to transmute one into another—alchemy focused its experimental efforts on the processes of distillation, sublimation, and crystallization and how they affected different materials. Exploring these processes, however, required sophisticated tools and technologies as well as scientific means and methods…
Lydia Pine takes us “Inside the Alchemist’s Workshop.”
* Fritz Leiber
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As we go for the gold, we might send elemental birthday greetings to Glenn Theodore Seaborg; he was born on this date in 1912. A chemist, his discovery and investigation of plutonium and nine other transuranium elements was part of the effort during World War II to develop an atomic bomb; it earned him a share of the 1951 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
Seaborg went on to serve as Chancellor of the University of California, as Chair of the Atomic Energy Commission, and as an advisor to 10 presidents– from Harry S. Truman to Bill Clinton– on nuclear policy and science education. Element 106 (the last of the ten that Seaborg discovered), was named seaborgium in his honor.
Like so many of the scientists who worked on the Manhattan Project, Seaborg became a campaigner for arms control. He was a signatory to the Franck Report and contributed to the Limited Test Ban Treaty, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.
The Dear Leader’s Gaze…
Looking at dinner
Looking at son and Dear-Leader-Apparent Kim Jong-un
More stolen glances at Makemisteaks‘ insightful “Kim Jong-il Looking at Things.” (TotH to Rebecca MacKinnon)
As we reach for our lens cloths, we might recall that it was on this date in 2002 that North Korea rejected the International Atomic Energy Agency’s call to allow inspections, saying the U.N. nuclear watchdog was abetting U.S. policy toward the North. Ten years earlier North Korea had abrogated its participation in the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, but then agreed the following year to freeze and eventually dismantle its nuclear weapons program in exchange for international aid to build two power-producing nuclear reactors. The following month, in his State of the Union address, President George W. Bush lumped North Korea with Iran and Iraq as the “Axis of Evil.”
Looking at atomic test site (source)
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