Describe the reaction of Einstein to the discovery of Nuclear Fission in Berlin? How did his fears proved to be true?
Answers
Answer:
In the 1920s, while living in Berlin, the physicist collaborated with Hungarian graduate assistant Leo Szilárd to develop and patent an energy-efficient fridge.
While their design never went to market, the duo’s work ultimately embroiled Einstein—an avowed pacifist—in the race to create an atomic bomb during World War II.
Albert Einstein is perhaps most famous for introducing the world to the equation E=mc2. In essence, he discovered that energy and mass are interchangeable, setting the stage for nuclear power—and atomic weapons.
His part in the drama of nuclear war may have ended there if not for a simple refrigerator.
In the 1920s, while living in Berlin, the physicist collaborated with Hungarian graduate assistant Leo Szilárd to develop and patent an energy-efficient fridge. While their design never went to market, the duo’s work ultimately embroiled Einstein—an avowed pacifist—in the race to create an atomic bomb during World War II.
Even after Szilárd and Einstein ended their partnership over appliances, the two scientists stayed in touch.
In 1933, the same year Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany, Szilárd discovered the nuclear chain reaction—the process that unleashes the energy locked in atoms to create enormous explosions. And by 1939, he had became convinced that German scientists might be using current scientific developments to develop an atomic weapon.
So he approached his one-time colleague—then the world’s most famous scientist—and asked him to warn U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
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All of this troubled Einstein. “Had I known that the Germans would not succeed in producing an atomic bomb,” he told the media, “I never would have lifted a finger.”
He pointed out, correctly, that he had never actually worked on the bomb
project.
And he claimed to a Japanese publication, “My participation in the production of the atom bomb consisted in a single act: I signed a letter to President Roosevelt.”
Explanation:
The letter dated 2 August and addressed to President Roosevelt warned that:
"In the course of the last four months it has been made probable —
through the work of Joliot in France as well as Fermi and Szilárd in America
that it may become possible to set up a nuclear chain reaction in a large mass of uranium, by which vast amounts of power and large quantities of new radium-like elements would be generated.
Now it appears almost certain that this could be achieved in the immediate future.
This new phenomenon would also lead to the construction of bombs, and it is conceivable though much less certain that extremely powerful bombs of a new type may thus be constructed.
A single bomb of this type, carried by boat and exploded in a port, might very well destroy the whole port together with some of the surrounding territory. However, such bombs might very well prove to be too heavy for transportation by air."
It also specifically warned about Germany:
"I understand that Germany has actually stopped the sale of uranium from the Czechoslovakian mines which she has taken over.
That she should have taken such early action might perhaps be understood on the ground that the son of the German Under-Secretary of State, von Weizsäcker, is attached to the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Institut in Berlin where some of the American work on uranium is now being repeated."