Fission // 20 - by Will Savage - Will's Substack
The tenuous grip of the strong force squeezes 92 protons and 143 neutrons into a ball barely 15 femtometers across. It shifts and bubbles, teetering on a knife’s edge of stability. Under the right conditions, a curious thing can happen. A lone neutron, drifting at a gentle 2,200 meters per second, can slip between the cracks of these 92 protons. The nucleus, absorbing it, becomes Uranium-236. But Uranium-236 is too unstable. The nucleus writhes, stretches, pinches at the waist. The strong force, strained beyond its limits, loses its grip. The atom splits. Two daughter nuclei fly apart in a brilliant shower of free neutrons, and leave in their wake 200 MeV of energy. Today is my 20th birthday. At twenty, Alexander ascended to the throne of Macedon. Picasso painted The Death of Casagemas. Gates incorporated Microsoft. To be twenty is to desire greatness. What is greatness in the 21st century? Conquest is antiquated. The arts are saturated. Only technology stands as the final frontier of
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