Buzz Blog
Scientific Ruins: The Defunct Atom Smasher Next Door
These guys didn't seem to have any problems opening up the hatch. (Carnegie Institution)
The results of decades-old experiments are still tacked up on bulletin boards. The "Notice to Employees" about radiation protection bears the seal of the old Atomic Energy Commission, which ceased to exist in 1975.
The APO played a central role at a pivotal moment in 20th century physics history. In January of 1939, Niels Bohr arrived in the United States with important news. Just a few weeks earlier, Otto Hahn, Fritz Strassmann and Lise Meitner in Germany discovered that when they bombarded uranium samples with neutrons the atoms split apart into two atoms of barium, releasing tremendous energy in the process. They had discovered nuclear fission.
Bohr broke the news of the discovery at a physics conference in downtown Washington DC. Two physicists sitting in the back of the room, Richard Roberts and Lawrence Hafstad, shot each other excited glances and bolted across town. They fired up the APO and within 48 hours, had replicated the experiment using their new particle accelerator.
Attendees of the conference showed up to see the results and brought along a reporter. Within a day, the world learned about the imminent arrival of atomic energy. The physicists snapped a photo inside the target room just after the demonstration of fission. From left to right Robert Meyer, Merle Tuve (who designed and built the APO), Enrico Fermi, Roberts, Leon Rosenfeld, Erik Bohr, Niels Bohr, Gregory Breit and John Fleming. Edward Teller was still upstairs when the photo was snapped. (Carnegie Institution)
The APO wasn't used at all during World War II. Just about all nuclear research was classified and focused on building the atomic bomb in New Mexico. The Department of Terrestrial Magnetism devoted itself to designing the proximity fuze for rockets instead.
After the war, research at the APO started up again, studying the nuclear structure of hundreds of atomic isotopes. In the 1960s scientists updated the machine to fire polarized protons, investigating the structure of unstable, short-lived nuclei. In 1975, the machine had finally outlived its usefulness, and was deactivated for good.
I couldn't help but wonder what would it would have been like to see the old machine active. Turns out, in 2010 nonfiction artist Jim Sanborn rebuilt an earlier prototype of the APO for an art installation in Denver. He scoured through old blueprints and schematics he found in the Carnegie archive, and built an exact working replica of the machine. Then, like Roberts and Hafstad, he used it to fission uranium of his own.
3 Comments:
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