Related papers: Thirty Minutes Before the Dawn -- Trinity
The Italian civil nuclear projects had a very early origin, with the first ideas originating as far back as 1945. The construction of the first three plants dated back to the period 1956-1964, and at that time Italy ranked third in the…
This essay gives a short, informal account of the development of digital logic from the Pleistocene to the Manhattan Project, the introduction of reversible circuits, and Richard Feynman's allied proposal for quantum computing. We argue…
The results of a careful analysis of all the available information on the activities of Heisenberg and of his talks during the years 1939 to 1945 can be summarized in the following way. Like several other German physicists Heisenberg was…
In the wake of the latest trends of artificial intelligence (AI), there has been a resurgence of claims and questions about the Turing test and its value, which are reminiscent of decades of practical "Turing" tests. If AI were quantum…
The three-box problem is a gedankenexperiment designed to elucidate some interesting features of quantum measurement and locality. A particle is prepared in a particular superposition of three boxes, and later found in a different (but…
Reactor neutrinos have been an important tool for both discovery and precision measurement in the history of neutrino studies. Since the first generation of reactor neutrino experiments in the 1950s, the detector technology has been greatly…
Much of George Dracoulis's research career was devoted to utilizing gamma-ray spectroscopy in fundamental studies in nuclear physics. This same technology is useful in a wide range of applications in the area of nuclear forensics. Over the…
A mere amount of 2.2 grams (780 TBq) of tritium, diluted in $1.25 \cdot 10^6$ m$^3$ water, contained in 1047 tanks at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant are being released to the Pacific Ocean. The operation is scheduled to last over…
Modern atomic and nuclear physics took its start in the early part of the twentieth century, to a large extent based upon experimental investigations of radioactive phenomena. Foremost among the pioneers of the new kind of physics was…
The dawning of the Space Age marked the start of an ongoing relationship between the professional astronomical community and both state and non-state actors that launch and operate spacecraft in near-Earth orbital space. While the Cold War…
Enrico Fermi and Leo Szilard worked together at Columbia in 1939-40, just after nuclear fission was discovered, to ascertain the feasibility of a nuclear chain reaction, and then on the construction of the first nuclear reactor. Szilard…
The current cycle of hype and anxiety concerning the benefits and risks to human society of Artificial Intelligence is fuelled, not only by the increasing use of generative AI and other AI tools by the general public, but also by claims…
Reconciliation of frequentist and Bayesian approaches to elementary treatment of data in nuclear and particle physics is attempted. Unique procedure to express the significance of a small count in presence of background is henceforth…
This article shows the importance that has had the scientific research, the technological development and the innovation processes in increasing the lethality of the available weapons during the last century. A set of initiatives promoted…
This manuscript originated from the discussion at the workshop on the "Future of Few-body Low Energy Experimental Physics" (FFLEEP), which was held at the University of Trento on December 4-7, 2002 and has been written in its present form…
Kicked atoms under a constant Stark or gravity field are investigated for experimental setups with cold and ultra cold atoms. The parametric stability of the quantum dynamics is studied using the fidelity. In the case of a quantum…
Dawning neutron physics was more complex than one might expect. The chance that the neutron comprised a proton and an electron was diffusely taken into account after the discovery of the neutron. Moreover, uncertainties persisted about the…
Some 50~years ago, physicists, and after them the entire world, started to found their time reference on atomic properties instead of motions of the Earth that have been in use since the origin. Far from being an arrival point, this…
Nuclear energy has been gaining momentum recently as one of the solutions to tackle climate change. However, significant environmental and health-risk concerns remain associated with potential accidents. Despite significant preventive…
I shall sketch the history of reactor neutrino physics over five decades since the Reines-Cowan proof of neutrino existence in the late 50s, till the advent of the present era of precision reactor neutrino oscillation experiments. There are…