Do you believe in modern-day miracles? Miracles imply divine intervention, therefore many secularists and skeptics will reject them out-of-hand. There is not enough information to base an informed opinion about ancient miracles, those must be faith-based, but there are records of one major modern-day miracle transpired over a five-year period, almost exactly 70 years ago. It is a miracle which drastically changed the �free-world� as we know it today and may have changed history as much (or more) than some of those ancient ones � the ones that must be taken on faith.
The magazine �Science News� has a feature called �TimeLine: 70 Years Ago in Science News� In June, 1934 this headline appeared in the magazine � and reappears in this month�s �Timeline� feature: NEW ELEMENT IS "RELATIVE" OF BRITTLE METAL MANGANESE The heaviest element known to science�No. 93�is a substance whose properties make it a chemical relative of the hard, brittle metal manganese. A description of the nature of the new element, together with proof of its existence, has appeared in the British science journal Nature, over the signature of its discoverer, Prof. Enrico Fermi of the Royal University, Rome. [end] So where is the miracle you ask? Remember this was 1934. Earlier in the depression era, Fermi came up with the idea to use neutrons as projectiles � fired into a target atom's nucleus. Many of these nuclei absorbed the extra neutron during this process, creating isotopes. Quite a discovery in and of itself; however, Fermi made two other extraordinary discoveries that somehow *never got the attention* of the soon-to-be overlords of Europe - the Nazis. Oh, almost forgot. No. 93 is Neptunium, but it is likely not what Fermi found. What Fermi may have found was apparently No. 94 - now called plutonium - though this account is not the "official" story and Seaborg of Hahn are sometimes falsely credited with the discovery. We will never really know, for sure. Anyway, had things been different this critcal gap 1934-1939 could have been the Nazi ticket to world domination instead of the "Five year Miracle." Though it didn't seem to make sense then, Fermi found that by slowing down the neutron with paraffin, it had a larger impact on the target nucleus, especially heavy ones like uranium. He found that the speed at which the neutron was most likely to be absorbed differed for every element but slow neutrons could actually create a new element out of uranium � No 94. Plutonium is the ideal material for making a bomb that will subjugate a country, one that will have more than a million-to-one advantage over TNT in terms of its explosive power per pound of mass: a bomb that would have easily brought the world to its knees, including America. That is, had not the �Five Year Miracle� taken place and Fascism/Nazism had gotten their greedy little racist hands on Fermi�s work. And it would have certainly � had it not been for one (of many) fatal flaw in their system. BTW, for these discoveries, Fermi was awarded the Nobel Prize Physics in 1938. But part of the miracle, which is the subject of this post, is that by then Fermi was long-gone as well as many of the German Jews, who were their best physicists. Anti-semitism was strengthening within Italy, just as within Germany at this time; and though Fermi was not Jewish, his wife was. He immigrated to the USA to escape persecution and got a job working at Columbia University as a professor of physics. So the Jews, so envied and so misunderstood, who gave us Jesus and paid heavily for it, also gave us Fermi (indirectly) and they paid even more heavily for that. In return, the West gave them back their ancestral land, and now they are paying dearly for even that. Doesn�t seem fair, does it? I guess that�s the rub of being God�s �chosen�people. Anyway, Fermi realized that if you split an atom's nucleus, and the target emitted more neutrons - then the second time around those neutrons could do something extraordinary � they could be used to split more nuclei, ad infinitum, causing a nuclear chain reaction. Each time a nucleus was split, an enormous amount of energy was released � nearly a hundred million times more than combustion per particle. Fermi's discovery of plutonium, the necessity of slow neutrons, the nuclear chain reaction, and then a way to control the reaction all led to the construction of atomic bombs and eventually to nuclear power. The Mark II bomb, mentioned in a previous post about the �Port Chicago� incident/coverup is the design most like Fermi�s original idea � a moderated bomb but using U-235 instead of plutonium. The Mark II was Oppenheimer�s inspiration as well, although it turned out to be not the best solution for war(too little power � BUT it probably IS the most efficient solution, and the one that terrorist�s will use, if they get the chance). There is plenty of evidence that it did work fairly well that one time, and was then shelved. Hey, if you are going to kill efficiently and indiscriminately, as every General worth his salt knows, you need megatons not sub-kilotons. During World War II, Fermi worked on the Manhattan Project, of course, but was never given due credit. After the war, he believed the human toll from these bombs was too large and in 1949, argued against the development of a hydrogen bomb, but his voice was not heard then (as in 1934) and the H-bomb was built anyway. In 1954, Enrico Fermi succumbed to stomach cancer at the age of 53, having served his dual purpose (as in all of spirituality) of Lucifer(�fire bringer�) and Casandra(�nobody listens to me until its too late�)� delivering in the process, from the perspective of all free men � what seems like divine intervention � or an incredible bit of good fortune. Writer W.L. Laurence has called this delay between Fermi�s initial discovery under Fascism until the later development in the Manhattan Project, the "Great Five Year Miracle that Saved the World". There is a lot more to it than this brief tale and worth the time to read up on (offical accounts vs. unofficial)� if you are not out exploding fireworks of your own this weekend. Jones
